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DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 



DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 




A DOCTOR . . . THE PROPHET AND CHAMPION OF A PEOP 



Dr. GrenfelPs Parish 



The Deep Sea F i s her m e 



n 



By 
NORMAN DUNCAN 

Author of 
" Doctor Luke of the Labrador " 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



^J^ 



Copyright, 1905, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 






copy li 



.MOl 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 63 Washington Street 
Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 



TO 
TEE CBEW OF THE " 8TEATHG0NA 



Henry Bartlett, 
Munden Clark, 
"William Percy, 
John Scott, 
Archie Butler, 
James Hiscock, 
Alec Sims, 



Skipper 

Second Samd 

First Engineer 

Second Engineer 

Hosjpital Hand 

Cook 

SJivp's Boy 



TO THE READER 

THIS book pretends to no literary 
excellence ; it has a far better rea- 
son for existence — a larger justifica- 
tion. Its purpose is to spread the knowl- 
edge of the work of Dr. Wilfred T. Gren- 
f ell, of the Royal I^ational Mission to Deep- 
Sea Fishermen, at work on the coasts of E'ew- 
foundland and Labrador; and to describe 
the character and condition of the folk whom 
he seeks to help. The man and the mission 
are worthy of sympathetic interest ; worthy, 
too, of unqualified approbation, of support 
of every sort. Dr. Grenfell is indefatigable, 
devoted, heroic ; he is more and even better 
than that — he is a sane and efficient worker. 
Frankly, the author believes that the reader 
would do a good deed by contributing to 
the maintenance and development of the 
doctor's beneficent undertakings; and re- 



TO THE EEADER 

grets that the man and his work are pre- 
sented in this inadequate way and by so 
incapable a hand. The author is under ob- 
ligation to the editors of Harjper^s Magazine^ 
of The World'' s Work, and of Outing for 
permission to reprint the contributed papers 
which, in some part, go to make up the vol- 
ume. He wishes also to protest that Dr. 
Grenf ell is not the hero of a certain work of 
fiction dealing with life on the Labrador 
coast. Some unhappy misunderstanding 
has arisen on this point. The author wishes 
to make it plain that " Doctor Duke " was 
not drawn from Dr. Grenfell. 

KD. 

College Campusy 

Washington, Pennsylvania, January 23, igo^. 



CONTENTS 



I. 


The Doctor . . . . 


II 


II. 


A Round of Bleak Coasts 


i8 


III. 


Ships in Peril . 


26 


IV. 


Desperate Need 


37 


V. 


A Helping Hand 


48 


VI. 


Faith and Duty 


• 55 


VII. 


The Liveyere . 


. 67 


VIII. 


With the Fleet 


. 83 


IX. 


On the French Shore 


. 103 


X. 


Some Outport Folk 


. no 


XI. 


Winter Prachce. . 


• 132 


XII. 


The Champion 


. 146 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing page 
" A Doctor ... the Prophet and Champion 

of a People" Titk 

" It is an Evil Coast " 20 

" Bound North " . . . . . 30 

"A Turf Hut" 44 

*'Set Sail from Great Yarmouth Harbour for 

Labrador " 50 

"Appeared with a Little Steam-launch, the 

Princess May" 55 

" The Hospital Ship, Strathcona " . . -65 
" The Labrador ' Liveyere ' " . . .73 

" At Indian Harbour " .... 86 

" Set the Traps in the Open Sea " . .93 

" The Bully-boat Becomes a Home " . . loi 
" The Whitewashed Cottages on the Hills " . 1 1 1 

"Toil" 122 

"The Hospital at Battle Harbour " . .133 
"The Doctor on a Winter's Journey " . • H4 

" A Crew Quite Capable of Taking You into It " 1 50 



Dr. Grenfeir s Parish 



THE DOCTOR 

DOCTOK WILFKED T. GKEN- 
FELL is the young Englishman 
who, for the love of God, practices 
medicine on the coasts of Newfoundland and 
Labrador. Other men have been moved 
to heroic deeds by the same high motive, 
but the professional round, I fancy, is quite 
out of the common ; indeed, it may be that 
in all the world there is not another of the 
sort. It extends from Cape John of New- 
foundland around Cape Norman and into 
the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Ungava 
Bay and Cape Chidley of the Labrador south- 
ward far into the Gulf of St. Lawrence — 
two thousand miles of bitterly inhospitable 
shore : which a man in haste must sail with 
his life in his hands. The folk are for the 
11 



12 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

most part isolated and desperately wretched 
— the shore fishermen of the remoter New- 
foundland coasts, the Labrador " liveyeres," 
the Indians of the forbidding interior, the Es- 
quimaux of the far north. It is to such as 
these that the man gives devoted and heroic 
service — not for gain; there is no gain to 
be got in those impoverished places : merely 
for the love of God. 

I once went ashore in a little harbour of 
the northeast coast of l!Tewfoundland. It 
was a place most unimportant — and it was 
just beyond the doctor's round. The sea 
sullenly confronted it, hills overhung it, and 
a scrawny wilderness flanked the hills ; the 
ten white cottages of the place gripped the 
dripping rocks as for dear life. And down 
the path there came an old fisherman to 
meet the stranger. 

" Good-even, zur," said he. 

" Good-evening." 

He waited for a long time. Then, "Be 
you a doctor, zur ? " he asked. 



THE DOCTOR 13 

" No, sir." 

" Noa ? Isn't you ? Now, I was thinkin' 
maybe you might be. But you isn't, you 
says?" 

" Sorry — but, no ; really, I'm not." 

" Well, zur," he persisted, " I was thinkin' 
you might be, when I seed you comin' 
ashore. They is a doctor on this coast," 
he added, " but he's sixty mile along shore. 
'Tis a wonderful expense t' have un up. 
This here harbour isn't able. An' you isn't 
a doctor, you says ? Is you sure, zur ? " 

There was unhappily no doubt about it. 

" I was thinkin' you might be," he went 
on, wistfully, " when I seed you comin' 
ashore. But perhaps you might know 
something about doctorin' ? Noa ? " 

"Nothing." 

"I was thinkin', now, that you might. 
'Tis my little girl that's sick. Sure, none 
of us knows what's the matter with she. 
Woan't you come up an' see she, zur ? Per- 
haps you might do something — though you 
isn't — a doctor." 



14 BR. GEEISTFELL^S PARISH 

The little girl was lying on the floor — on 
a ragged quilt, in a corner. She was a fair 
child — a little maid of seven. Her eyes 
were deep blue, wide, and fringed with 
long, heavy lashes. Her hair was flaxen, 
abundant, all tangled and curly. Indeed, 
she was a winsome little thing ! 

" I'm thinkin' she'U be dyin' soon," said 
the mother. " Sure, she's wonderful swelled 
in the legs. "We been waitin' for a doctor 
t' come, an' we kind o' thought you was 
one." 

" How long have you waited ? " 

"'Twas in April she was took. She've 
been lyin' there ever since. 'Tis near Au- 
gust, now, I'm thinkin'." 

" They was a doctor here two year ago," 
said the man. " He come by chance," he 
added, " like you." 

" Think they'll be on^ comin' soon ? " the 
woman asked. 

I took the little girl's hand. It was dry 
and hot. She did not smile — nor was she 
afraid. Her fingers closed upon the hand 



THE DOCTOR 15 

she held. She was a blue-eyed, winsome 
little maid; but pain had driven all the 
sweet roguery out of her face. 

" Does you think she'll die, zur ? " asked 
the woman, anxiously. 

I did not know. 

" Sure, zur," said the man, trying to smile, 
"'tis wonderful queer, but I sure thought 
you was a doctor, when I seed you comin' 
ashore." 

"But you isn't?" the woman pursued, 
still hopefully. " Is you sure you couldn't do 
nothin' ? Is you noa kind of a doctor, at all ? 
We doan't — we doan't — want she t' die I " 

In the silence — so long and deep a silence 
— melancholy shadows crept in from the 
desolation without. 

" I wisht you was a doctor," said the man. 
" I — wisht — you — was ! " 

He was crying. 

" They need," thought I, " a mission-doc- 
tor in these parts." 

And the next day — in the harbour beyond 
— I first heard of Grenfell. In that place 



16 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

they said they would send Kim to the little 
maid who lay dying ; they assured me, in- 
deed, that he would make haste, when he came 
that way: which would be, perhaps, they 
thought, in " 'long about a month." Whether 
or not the doctor succoured the child I do not 
know ; but I have never forgotten this first 
impression of his work — the conviction that 
it was a good work for a man to be about. 

Subsequently I learned that Dr. Grenfell 
was the superintendent of the I^ewf oundland 
and Labrador activities of the Koyal !N"a- 
tional Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, an 
English organization, with a religious and 
medical work already well-established on 
the North Sea, and a medical mission then 
in process of development on the North At- 
lantic coast. Two years later he discovered 
himself to be a robust, hearty Saxon, strong, 
indefatigable, devoted, jolly; a doctor, a 
parson by times, something of a sportsman 
when occasion permitted, a master-mariner, 
a magistrate, the director of certain commer- 



THE DOCTOR 17 

cial enterprises designed to " help the folk 
help themselves" — the prophet and cham- 
pion, indeed, of a people : and a man very 
much in love with life. 



II 

A ROUND of BLEAK COASTS 

THE coast of Labrador, which, in 
number of miles, forms the larger 
half of the doctor's round, is for- 
bidding, indeed — naked, rugged, desolate, 
lying sombre in a mist. It is of weather- 
worn gray rock, broken at intervals by long 
ribs of black. In part it is low and ragged, 
slowly rising, by way of bare slopes and 
starved forest, to broken mountain ranges, 
which lie blue and bold in the inland waste. 
Elsewhere it rears from the edge of the sea 
in stupendous cliffs and lofty, rugged hills. 
There is no inviting stretch of shore the 
length of it — no sandy beach, no line of 
shingle, no grassy bank ; the sea washes a 
thousand miles of jagged rock. Were it not 
for the harbours — innumerable and snugly 
sheltered from the winds and ground swell 
18 



A ROUND OF BLEAK COASTS 19 

of the open — there would be no navigating 
the waters of that region. The Strait Shore 
is buoyed, lighted, minutely charted. The 
reefs and currents and tickles ^ and harbours 
are all known. A northeast gale, to be sure, 
raises a commotion, and fog and drift-ice 
add something to the chance of disaster; 
but, as they say, from one peril there are 
two ways of escape to three sheltered places. 
To the north, however, where the doctor 
makes his way, the coast is best sailed on 
the plan of the skipper of the old Twelve 
Brothers. 

"You don't cotch me meddlin' with no 
land ! " said he. 

Past the Dead Islands, Snug Harbour, 
Domino Run, Devil's Lookout and the 
Quaker's Hat — beyond Johnny Paul's Rock 
and the Wolves, Sandwich Bay, Tumble- 
down Dick, Indian Harbour, and the White 
Cockade — past Cape Harrigan, the Farm- 
yard Islands and the Hen and Chickens — 

* A *' tickle " is a naxrow passage to a harbour or be- 
tween two islands. 



20 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 

far north to the great, craggy hills and 
strange peoples of Kikkertadsoak, Scoralik, 
Tunnulusoak, E'ain, Okak, and, at last, 
to Cape Chidley itself — northward, every 
crooked mile of the way, bold headlands, 
low outlying islands, sunken reefs, tides, 
fogs, great winds and snow make hard sail- 
ing of it. It is an evil coast, ill-charted 
where charted at all; some part of the 
present-day map is based upon the guess- 
work of the eighteenth century navigators. 
The doctor, like the skippers of the fishing- 
craft, must sometimes sail by guess and 
hearsay, by recollection and old rhymes. 

The gusts and great waves of open water 
— of the free, wide sea, I mean, over which 
a ship may safely drive while the weather 
exhausts its evil mood — are menace enough 
for the stoutest heart. But the Labrador 
voyage is inshore — a winding course among 
the islands, or a straight one from headland 
to headland, of a coast off which reefs lie 
thick : low-lying, jagged ledges, washed by 



A ROUND OF BLEAK COASTS 21 

the sea in heavy weather ; barren hills, 
rising abruptly — and all isolated — from safe 
water; sunken rocks, disclosed, upon ap- 
proach, only by the green swirl above them. 
They are countless — scattered everywhere, 
hidden and disclosed. They lie in the 
mouths of harbours, they lie close to the 
coast, they lie offshore; they run twenty 
miles out to sea. Here is no plain sailing ; 
the skipper must be sure of the way — or 
choose it gingerly : else the hidden rock 
will inevitably " pick him up." 
Recently the doctor was " picked up." 
" Oh, yes," says he, with interest. " An 
uncharted rock. It took two of the three 
blades of the propeller. But, really, you'd 
be surprised to know how well the ship got 
along with one ! " 

To know the submerged rocks of one 
harbour and the neighbouring coast, how- 
ever evil the place, is small accomplishment. 
The Newfoundland lad of seven years would 
count himself his father's shame if he failed 



22 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

in so little. High tide and low tide, quiet 
sea and heavy swell, he will know where he 
can take the punt — the depth of water, to 
an inch, which overlies the danger spots. 
But here are a hundred harbours — a thou- 
sand miles of coast — with reefs and islands 
scattered like dust the length of it. The 
man who sails the Labrador must know 
it all like his own back yard — not in 
sunny weather alone, but in the night, when 
the headlands are like black clouds ahead, 
and in the mist, when the noise of break- 
ers tells him all that he may know of his 
whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray 
distance, a thud and swish from a hidden 
place : the one is his beacon, the other his 
fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the doctor 
gets along. 

You may chart rocks, and beware of 
them ; but — it is a proverb on the coast — 
" there's no chart for icebergs." The Labra- 
dor current is charged with them — hard, 
dead- white glacier ice from the Arctic: 



A ROUND OF BLEAK COASTS 23 

massive bergSj innumerable, all the while 
shifting with tide and current and wind. 
What with floes and bergs — vast fields of 
drift-ice — the way north in the spring is 
most perilous. The same bergs — widely- 
scattered, diminished in number, dwarfed 
by the milder climate — give the transatlantic 
passenger evil dreams : somewhere in the 
night, somewhere in the mist, thinks he, they 
may lie ; and he shudders. The skipper of 
the Labrador craft hnows that they lie thick 
around him : there is no surmise ; when the 
night fell, when the fog closed in, there were 
a hundred to be counted from the masthead. 

Violent winds are always to be feared — 
swift, overwhelming hurricanes : winds that 
catch the unwary. They are not frequent ; 
but they do blow — will again blow, no man 
can tell when. In such a gale, forty vessels 
were driven on a lee shore ; in another, 
eighty were wrecked overnight — two thou- 
sand fishermen cast away, the coast littered 
with splinters of ships — and, once (it is but 



24 DE. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 

an incident), a schooner was torn from her 
anchors and flung on the rocks forty feet 
above the high-water mark. These are ex- 
ceptional storms; the common Labrador 
gale is not so violent, but evil enough in its 
own way. It is a northeaster, of which the 
barometer more often than not gives fair 
warning ; day after day it blows, cold, wet, 
foggy, dispiriting, increasing in violence, 
subsiding, returning again, until courage 
and strength are both worn out. 

Eeefs, drift-ice, wind and sea — and over 
all the fog : thick, wide-spread, persistent, 
swift in coming, mysterious in movement ; 
it compounds the dangers. It blinds men — 
they curse it, while they grope along: a 
desperate business, indeed, thus to run by 
guess where positive knowledge of the way 
merely mitigates the peril. There are days 
when the fog lies like a thick blanket on the 
face of the sea, hiding the head-sails from 
the man at the wheel ; it is night on deck, 
and broad day — with the sun in a blue sky 



A BOUND OF BLEAK COASTS 25 

— at the masthead ; the schooners are some- 
times steered by a man aloft. The Always 
Loaded, sixty tons and bound home with a 
cargo that did honour to her name, struck 
one of the outlying islands so suddenly, so 
violently, that the lookout in the bow, who 
had been peering into the mist, was pitched 
headlong into the surf. The Daughter, run- 
ning blind with a fair, light wind — she had 
been lost for a day — ran full tilt into a cliff ; 
the men ran forward from the soggy gloom 
of the after-deck into — bright sunshine at 
the bow ! It is the fog that wrecks ships. 

" Oh, I runned her ashore," says the cast- 
away skipper. " Thick ? Why, sure, 'twas 
thick ! " 

So the men who sail that coast hate fog, 
fear it, avoid it when they can, which is sel- 
dom ; they are not afraid of wind and sea, 
but there are times when they shake in their 
sea-boots, if the black fog catches them out 
of harbour. 



Ill 

SHIPS in PERIL 

IT is to be remarked that a wreck on the 
Labrador coast excites no wide surprise. 
Never a season passes but some craft 
are cast away. But that is merely the for- 
tune of sailing those waters — a fortune 
which the mission-doctor accepts with a 
glad heart : it provides him with an inter- 
esting succession of adventures ; life is not 
tame. Most men — I hesitate to say all — 
have been wrecked ; every man, woman, and 
child who has sailed the Labrador has nar- 
rowly escaped, at least. And the fashion 
of that escape is sometimes almost incredi- 
ble. 

The schooner AlVs Well (which is a ficti- 
tious name) was helpless in the wind and sea 
and whirling snow of a great blizzard. At 
dusk she was driven inshore — no man knew 
26 



SHIPS IN PERIL 27 

where. Strange cliffs loomed in the snow 
ahead ; breakers — they were within stone's 
throw — flashed and thundered to port and 
starboard ; the ship was driving swiftly into 
the surf. When she was fairly upon the 
rocks, Skipper John, then a hand aboard 
(it was he who told me the story), ran be- 
low and tumbled into his bunk, believing it 
to be the better place to drown in. 

" "Well, lads," said he to the men in the 
forecastle, " we got t' go this time. 'Tis no 
use goin' on deck." 

But the ship drove through a tickle no 
wider than twice her beam and came sud- 
denly into the quiet water of a harbour ! 

The sealing-schooner Right and Tight 
struck on the Fish Rocks off Cape Charles 
in the dusk of a northeast gale. It is a 
jagged, black reef, outlying and isolated; 
the seas wash over it in heavy weather. It 
was a bitter gale ; there was ice in the sea, 
and the wind was wild and thick with snow ; 
she was driving before it — wrecked, blind, 



28 DE. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 

utterly lost. The breakers flung her on the 
reef, broke her back, crunched her, swept 
the splinters on. Forty-two men were of a 
sudden drowned in the sea beyond ; but the 
skipper was left clinging to the rock in a 
swirl of receding water. 

" Us seed un there in the marnin'," said 
the old man of Cape Charles who told me 
the story. " He were stickin' to it like a 
mussel, with the sea breakin' right over un ! 
'Cod ! he were ! " 

He laughed and shook his head ; that was 
a tribute to the strength and courage with 
which the man on the reef had withstood 
the icy breakers through the night. 

" Look ! us couldn't get near un," he went 
on. "'Twas clear enough t' see, but the 
wind was blowin' wonderful, an' the seas 
was too big for the skiff. Sure, I hnows 
that ; for us tried it. 

" * Leave us build a fire ! ' says my woman. 
* Leave us build a fire on the head ! ' says 
she. ' 'Twill let un know they's folk lookin' 



SHIPS IN PEEIL 29 

" 'Twas a wonderful big fire us set ; an' it 
kep' us warm, so us set there all day watchin' 
the skipper o' the Right an* Tight on Fish 
Kocks. The big seas jerked un loose an' 
flung un about, an' many a one washed right 
over un ; but nar a sea could carry un off. 
'Twas a wonderful sight t' see un knocked 
off his feet, an' scramble round an' cotch 
hold somewheres else. 'Cod ! it were — the 
way that man stuck t' them slippery rocks 
all day long ! " 

He laughed again — not heartlessly ; it 
was the only way in which he could express 
his admiration. 

" We tried the skiff again afore dark," he 
continued ; " but 'twasn't no use. The seas 
was too big. Sure, he knowed that so well 
as we. So us had t' leave un there all night. 

"* He'll never be there in the marnin',' 
says my woman. 

" ' You wait,' says I, * an' you'll see. I'm 
thinkin' he will.' 

"An' he was, zur — right there on Fish 
Kocks, same as ever ; still stickin' on like the 



30 DR. GRENFELL^S PAEISH 

toughest ol' mussel ever you tasted. Sure, 
I had t' rub me eyes when I looked ; but 
'twas he, never fear — 'twas he, stickin' there 
like a mussel. But there was no gettin' un 
then. Us watched un all that day. 'Twas 
dark afore us got un ashore. 

" ' You come nigh it that time,' says I. 

" ' I'll have t' come a sight nigher,' says 
he, ' afore / goes ! ' " 

The man had been on the reef more than 
forty-eight hours ! 

The ArTTvy Lass, bound north, was lost 
in the fog. They hove her to. All hands 
knew that she lay somewhere near the 
coast. The skipper needed a sight of the 
rocks — just a glimpse of some headland or 
island — to pick the course. It was im- 
portant that he should have it. There 
was an iceberg floating near ; it was mass- 
ive ; it appeared to be steady — and the sea 
was quiet. From the top of it, he thought 
(the fog was dense and seemed to be lying 
low), he might see far and near. His crew 



SHIPS IN PERIL 31 

put hira on the ice with the quarter-boat 
and then hung off a bit. He clambered up 
the side of the berg. Near the summit he 
had to cut his foothold with an axe. This 
was unfortunate; for he gave the great 
white mass one blow too many. It split 
under his feet. He fell headlong into the 
widening crevice. But he was apparently 
not a whit the worse for it when his boat's 
crew picked him up. 

A schooner — ^let her be called the Good 
Fortune — running through dense fog, with 
a fair, high wind and all sail set, struck a 
" twin " iceberg bow on. She was wrecked 
in a flash : her jib-boom was rammed into 
her forecastle ; her bows were stove in ; her 
topmast snapped and came crashing to the 
deck. Then she fell away from the ice; 
whereupon the wind caught her, turned her 
about, and drove her, stern foremost, into a 
narrow passage which lay between the two 
towering sections of the "twin." She 
scraped along, striking the ice on either 



32 DK. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

side; and with every blow, down came 
fragments from above. 

" It rained chunks," said the old skipper 
who told me the story. "You couldn't 
tell, look ! what minute you'd get knocked 
on the head." 

The falling ice made great havoc with 
the deck-works ; the boats were crushed ; 
the "house" was stove in; the deck was 
littered with ice. But the Good Fortune 
drove safely through, was rigged with 
makeshift sails, made harbour, was refitted 
by all hands — the Labradormen can build 
a ship with an axe — and continued her 
voyage. 

I have said that the JN'ewfoundlanders 
occasionally navigate by means of old 
rhymes; and this brings me to the case 
of Zachariah, the skipper of the Seavenly 
Rest. He was a Newf'un'lander. Neither 
wind, fog nor a loppy sea could turn his 
blood to water. He was a Newf'un'lander 
of the hardshell breed. So he sailed the 



SHIPS IN PERIL 33 

Heavenly Best without a chart. To be 
sure, he favoured the day for getting along, 
but he ran through the night when he was 
crowding south, and blithely took his 
chance with islands of ice and rock alike. 
He had some faith in a "telltale," had 
Zachariah, but he scorned charts. It was 
his boast that if he could not carry the 
harbours and headlands and shallows of 
five hundred miles of hungry coast in his 
head he should give up the Heavenly Rest 
and sail a paddle-punt for a living. It 
was well that he could — well for the ship 
and the crew and the folk at home. For, 
at the time of which I write, the Besty too 
light in ballast to withstand a gusty breeze, 
was groping through the fog for harbour 
from a gale which threatened a swift de- 
scent. It was " thick as bags," with a rising 
wind running in from the sea, and the surf 
breaking and hissing within hearing to 
leeward. 

" We be handy t' Hollow Harbour," said 
Zachariah. 



84 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 

" Is you sure, skipper ? " asked the cook. 

" Sure," said Zachariah. 

The He<menly Rest was in desperate case. 
She was running in — pursuing an unfalter- 
ing course for an unfamiliar, rocky shore. 
The warning of the surf sounded in every 
man's ears. It was imperative that her 
true position should soon be determined. 
The skipper was perched far forward, peer- 
ing through the fog for a sight of the coast. 

" Sure, an' I hopes," said the man at the 
wheel, " that she woan't break her nose on 
a rock afore the ol' man sees un." 

"Joe Bett's P'int!" exclaimed the 
skipper. 

Dead ahead, and high in the air, a mass 
of rock loomed through the mist. The 
skipper had recognized it in a flash. He 
ran aft and took the wheel. The HecmenJ/y 
Best sheered off and ran to sea. 

" We'll run in t' Hollow Harbour," said 
the skipper. 

" Has you ever been there ? " said the 
man who had surrendered the wheel. 



SHIPS IN PERIL 35 

"Noa, b'y," the skipper answered, "but 
I'll get there, whatever." 

The nose of the Heavenly Best was turned 
shoreward. Sang the skipper, humming it 
to himself in a rasping sing-song : 

" "When Joe Bett's P'int you is abreast, 
Dane's Rock bears due west. 
West-nor'west you must steer, 
'Til Brimstone Head do appear. 

" The tickle's narrow, not very wide : 
The deepest water's on the starboard side 
When in the harbour you is shot, 
Four fathoms you has got." 

The old song was chart enough for Skip- 
per Zachariah. Three times the Heavenly 
Rest ran in and out. Then she sighted 
Dane's Rock, which bore due west, true 
enough. West-nor'west was the course she 
followed, running blindly through the fog 
and heeling to the wind. Brimstone Head 
appeared in due time ; and in due time the 
rocks of the tickle — that narrow entrance 
to the harbour — appeared in vague, forbid- 
ding form to port and starboard. The 



36 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

schooner ran to the starboard for the 
deeper water. Into the harbour she shot ; 
and there they dropped anchor, caring not 
at all whether the water was four or forty 
fathoms, for it was deep enough. Through 
the night the gale tickled the topmasts, but 
the ship rode smoothly at her anchors, and 
Skipper Zachariah's stentorian sleep was 
not disturbed by any sudden call to duty. 

And the doctor of the Deep Sea Mission 
has had many a similar experience. 



TV 
DESPERA TE NEED 

IT was to these rough waters that Dr. 
Grenfell came when the need of the 
folk reached his ears and touched his 
heart. Before that, in the remoter parts of 
^Newfoundland and on the coast of Labrador 
there were no doctors. The folk depended 
for healing upon traditional cures, upon old 
women who worked charms, upon remedies 
ingeniously devised to meet the need of the 
moment, upon deluded persons who pre- 
scribed medicines of the most curious de- 
scription, upon a rough-and-ready surgery of 
their own, in which the implements of the 
kitchen and of the splitting-stage served a 
useful purpose. For example, there was a 
misled old fellow who set himself up as a 
healer in a lonely cove of the INewfound- 
land coast, where he lived a hermit, verily 
37 



38 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

believing, it may be, in the glory of his 
call and in the blessed efficacy of his min- 
istrations ; his cure for consumption — it was 
a tragic failure, in one case, at least — was a 
bull's heart, dried and powdered and ad- 
ministered with faith and regularity. Else- 
where there was a man, stricken with a 
mortal ailment, who, upon the recom- 
mendation of a kindly neighbour, regu- 
larly dosed himself with an ill-flavoured 
liquid obtained by boiling cast-off pulley- 
blocks in water. There was also a father 
who most hopefully attempted to cure his 
little lad of diphtheria by wrapping his 
throat with a split herring; but, unhap- 
pily, as he has said, "the wee feller 
choked hisself t' death," notwithstand- 
ing. There was another father — a man 
of grim, heroic disposition — whose little 
daughter chanced to freeze her feet to 
the very bone in midwinter ; when he 
perceived that a surgical operation could 
no longer be delayed, he cut them off 
with an axe. 



DESPERATE NEED 39 

An original preventative of sea-boils — 
with which the fishermen are cruelly 
afflicted upon the hands and wrists in 
raw weather — was evolved by a frowsy- 
headed old Labradorman of serious parts. 

" / never has none," said he, in the fashion 
of superior fellows. 
"ISTo?" 

" Nar a one. No, zur ! Not me ! " 
A glance of interested inquiry elicited 
no response. It but prolonged a large 
silence. 

" Have you never had a sea-boil ? " with 
the note and sharp glance of incredulity. 
" Not me. Not since I got my cure." 
" And what might that cure be ? " 
" Well, zur," was the amazing reply, " I 
cuts my nails on a Monday." 

It must be said, however, that the New- 
foundland government did provide a phy- 
sician — of a sort. Every summer he was 
sent north with the mail-boat, which made 
not more than six trips, touching here and 



40 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

there at long intervals, and, of a hard 
season, failing altogether to reach the 
farthest ports. While the boat waited — 
an hour, or a half, as might be — the 
doctor went ashore to cure the sick, if 
he chanced to be in the humour; other- 
wise the folk brought the sick aboard, 
where they were painstakingly treated or 
not, as the doctor's humour went. The 
government seemed never to inquire too 
minutely into the qualifications and char- 
acter of its appointee. The incumbent for 
many years — the folk thank God that he 
is dead — was an inefficient, ill-tempered, 
cruel man ; if not the very man himself, 
he was of a kind with the Newfoundland 
physician who ran a flag of warning to 
his masthead when he set out to get very 
drunk. 

The mail-boat dropped anchor one night 
in a far-away harbour of the Labrador, 
where there was desperate need of a 
doctor to ease a man's pain. They had 
waited a long time, patiently, day after 



DESPERATE NEED 41 

day, I am told; and when at last the 
mail-boat came, the man's skipper put 
out in glad haste to fetch the govern- 
ment physician. 

" He've turned in," they told him aboard. 

What did that matter? The skipper 
roused the doctor. 

" We've a sick man ashore, zur," said he, 
" an' he wants you t' come " 

"What I" roared the doctor. "Think 
I'm going to turn out this time of night ? " 

"Sure, zur," stammered the astounded 
skipper. " I — I — s'pose so. He's very sick, 
zur. He's coughin' " 

" Let him cough himself to death ! " said 
the doctor. 

Turn out ? ISTot he ! Rather, he turned 
over in his warm berth. It is to be assumed 
that the sick man died in pain ; it is to be 
assumed, too, that the physician continued 
a tranquil slumber, for the experience was 
not exceptional. 

" Let 'em die ! " he had said more than 
once. 



42 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

The government had provided for the 
transportation of sick fishermen from the 
Labrador coast to their homes in Newfound- 
land; these men were of the great New- 
foundland fleet of cod-fishing schooners, 
which fish the Labrador seas in the summer. 
It needed only the doctor's word to get the 
boon. Once a fisherman brought his con- 
sumptive son aboard — a young lad, with but 
a few weeks of life left. The boy wanted 
his mother, who was at home in Newfound- 
land. 

" Ay, he's fair siclc for his mother," said 
the father to the doctor. " I'm askin' you, 
zur, t' take un home on the mail-boat." 

The doctor was in a perverse mood that 
day. He would not take the boy. 

"Sure, zur," said the fisherman, "the 
schooner's not goin' 'til fall, an' I've no 
money, an' the lad's dyin'." 

But still the doctor would not. 

"I'm thinkin', zur," said the fisherman, 
steadily, " that you're not quite knowin' that 
the lad wants t' see his mother afore he dies." 



DESPERATE NEED 43 

The doctor laughed. 

" We'll have a laugh at you^"^ cried the 
indignant fisherman, "when you comes t' 
die ! " 

Then he cursed the doctor most heartily 
and took his son ashore. He was right — 
they did have a laugh at the doctor ; the 
whole coast might have laughed when he 
came to die. Being drunk on a stormy 
night, he fell down the companionway and 
broke his neck. 

Deep in the bays and up the rivers south 
of Hamilton Inlet, which is itself rather 
heavily timbered, there is wood to be had 
for the cutting ; but " down t' Chidley " — 
which is the northernmost point of the Lab- 
rador coast — the whole world is bare ; there 
is neither tree nor shrub, shore nor inland, to 
grace the naked rock ; the land lies bleak 
and desolate. But, once, a man lived there 
the year round. I don't know why; it is 
inexplicable ; but I am sure that the shift- 
less fellow and his wife had never an ink- 



44 DK. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 

ling that the circumstance was otherwise 
than commonplace and reasonable ; and the 
child, had he lived, would have continued to 
dwell there, boy and man, in faith that the 
earth was good to live in. One hard winter 
the man burnt all his wood long before the 
schooners came up from the lower coast. It 
was a desperate strait to come to ; but I am 
sure that he regarded his situation with sur- 
prising phlegm ; doubtless he slept as sound, 
if not as warm, as before. There was no 
more wood to be had ; so he burnt the fur- 
niture, every stick of it, and when that was 
gone, began on the frame of his house — a 
turf hut, builded under a kindly cliff, shel- 
tered somewhat from the winds from the 
frozen sea. As, rafter by rafter, the frame 
was withdrawn, he cut off the roof and 
folded in the turf walls ; thus, day by day, 
the space within dwindled ; his last fire was 
to consume the last of his shelter — which, 
no doubt, troubled him not at all ; for the 
day was not yet come. It is an ugly story. 
When they were found in the spring, the 



DESPERATE NEED 45 

woman lay dying on a heap of straw in a 
muddy corner — she was afliicted with hip- 
disease — and the house was tumbling about 
her ears ; the child, new born, had long ago 
frozen on its mother's breast. 

A doctor of the Newfoundland outports 
was once called to a little white cottage 
where three children lay sick of diphtheria. 
He was the family physician ; that is to say, 
the fisherman paid him so much by the year 
for medical attendance. But the injection 
of antitoxin is a " surgical operation " and 
therefore not provided for by the annual 
fee. 

"This," said the doctor, "will cost you 
two dollars an injection, John." 

" Oh, ay, zur," was the ready reply. " I'll 
pay you, zur. Go on, zur ! " 

" But you know my rule, John — no pay, 
no work. I can't break it for you, you 
know, or I'd have to break it for half the 
coast." 

"Oh, ay! 'Tis all right. I wants un 



46 DK. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

cured. I'll pay you when I sells me 
fish." 

"But you know my rule, John — cash 
down." 

The fisherman had but four dollars — no 
more ; nor could he obtain any more, though 
the doctor gave him ample time. I am sure 
that he loved his children dearly, but, un- 
fortunately, he had no more than four dol- 
lars; and there was no other doctor for 
fifty miles up and down the coast. 

"Four dollars," said the doctor, "two 
children. Which ones shall it be, John ? " 

Which ones ? Why, of course, after all, 
the doctor had himself to make the choice. 
John couldn't. So the doctor chose the 
" handiest " ones. The other one died. 

" Well," said John, unresentf uUy, the day 
after the funeral, " I s'pose a doctor haves a 
right t' be paid for what he does. But," 
much puzzled, " 'tis kind o' queer ! " 

This is not a work of fiction. These inci- 
dents are true. I set them down here 



DESPERATE NEED 47 

for the purpose of adequately showing the 
need of such a practitioner as "Wilfred T. 
Grenfell in the sphere in which he now 
labours. My point is — that if in the more 
settled places, where physicians might be 
summoned, such neglect and brutality could 
exist, in what a lamentable condition were 
the folk of the remoter parts, where even 
money could not purchase healing ! Nor 
are these true stories designed to reflect upon 
the regular practitioners of Newfoundland ; 
nor should they create a false impression 
concerning them. I have known many no- 
ble physicians in practice there ; indeed, I am 
persuaded that heroism and devotion are, 
perhaps, their distinguishing characteristics. 
God knows, there is little enough gain to 
be had ! God knows, too, that that little is 
hard earned ! These men do their work 
well and courageously, and as adequately 
as may be ; it is on the coasts beyond that 
the mission-doctor labours. 



A HELPING HAND 

WHILE the poor "liveyeres" and 
Newfoundland fishermen thus de- 
pended upon the mail-boat doc- 
tor and their own strange inventions for re- 
lief, Wilfred Grenfell, this well-born, Ox- 
ford-bred young Englishman, was walking 
the London hospitals. He was athletic, ad- 
venturous, dogged, unsentimental, merry, 
kind ; moreover — and most happily — he was 
used to the sea, and he loved it. It chanced 
one night that he strayed into the Taber- 
nacle in East London, where D. L. Moody, 
the American evangelist, was preaching. 
"When he came out he had resolved to make 
his religion " practical." There was noth- 
ing violent in this — no fevered, ill-judged 
determination to martyr himself at all costs. 
It was a quiet resolve to make the best of 
48 



A HELPING HAND 49 

his life — which he would have done at any 
rate, I think, for he was a young English- 
man of good breeding and the finest im- 
pulses. At once he cast about for " some 
way in which he could satisfy the aspira- 
tions of a young medical man, and combine 
with this a desire for adventure and definite 
Christian work." 

I had never before met a missionary of 
that frank type. " Why," I exclaimed to 
him, off the coast of Labrador, not long 
ago, "you seem to like this sort of 
life ! " 

We were aboard the mission steamer, 
bound north under full steam and all sail. 
He had been in feverish haste to reach the 
northern harbours, where, as he knew, the 
sick were watching for his coming. The 
fair wind, the rush of the little steamer on 
her way, pleased him. 

" Oh," said he, somewhat impatiently, 
" 7'm not a martyr." 

So he found what he sought. After ap- 
plying certain revolutionary ideas to Sun- 



50 DR. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 

day-school work in the London slums, in 
which a horizontal bar and a set of boxing- 
gloves for a time held equal place with the 
Bible and the hymn-book, he joined the 
staff of the Royal I^ational Mission to 
Deep Sea Fishermen, and established the 
medical mission to the fishermen of the 
North Sea. "When that work was organ- 
ized — when the fight was gone out of it — 
he sought a harder task ; he is of that type, 
then extraordinary but now familiar, which 
finds no delight where there is no difficulty. 
In the spring of 1892 he set sail from Great 
Yarmouth Harbour for Labrador in a 
ninety-ton schooner. Since then, in the 
face of hardship, peril, and prejudice, he 
has, with a light heart and strong purpose, 
healed the sick, preached the Word, clothed 
the naked, fed the starving, given shelter to 
them that had no roof, championed the 
wronged — in all, devotedly fought evil, pov- 
erty, oppression, and disease ; for he is bit- 
terly intolerant of those things. And 

" It's been jolly good fun I " says he. 



A HELPING HAND 51 

The immediate inspiration of this work 
was the sermon preached in East London 
by D. L. Moody. Later in life — indeed, 
soon before the great evangelist's death — 
Dr. Grenfell thanked him for that sermon. 
" And what have you been doing since ? " 
was Mr. Moody's prompt and searching 
question. " What ha/ve you heen doing 
since ? " Dr. Grenfell might with pro- 
priety and effect have placed in Mr. 
Moody's hands such letters as those which 
I reprint, saying: "What have I been 
doing since ? I have been kept busy, sir, 
responding to such calls as these.". Such 
calls as these : 

Docter plase I whant to see you. Doeher 
sir have you got a leg if you have Will you 
plase send him Down Praps he may fet and 
you would oblig. 

Eeverance dr. Grandfell. Dear sir we 
are expecting you hup and we would like 
for you to come so quick as you can for my 
dater is very sick with a very large sore 
under her left harm we emenangin that the 
old is two enchis deep and tow enches wide 



52 DR. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

plase com as quick as you can to save life 
I remains yours truely. 

Doeker, — Please wel you send me som- 
ting for the pain in my feet and what you 
proismed to send my little boy. Docker I 
am almost cripple, it is up my hips, I can 
hardly walk. This is my housban is gain- 
ing you this note from 

To Dr. Gransfield 

Dear honrabel Sir, 
I would wish to ask you Sir, if you would 
Be pleased to give me and my wife a littel 
poor close. I was going in the Bay to cut 
some wood. But I am all amost blind and 
cant Do much so if you would spear me 
some Sir I should Be very thankf uU to you 
Sir. 

I got Bad splotches all over my Body and 

i dont know what the cause of it is. Please 

Have you got anything for it. i Have'nt 

ot any money to Pay you now for anything 

ut i wont forget to Pay you when i gets 

the money. 

doctor — i have a compleant i ham weak 
with wind on the chest, weaknes all all over 
me up in my harm. 

Dear Dr. Grenfell. 
I would like for you to Have time to 



A HELPING HAND 53 

come Down to my House Before you leaves 
to go to St. Anthony. My little Girl is 
very Bad. it seems all in Her neck. Cant 
Ply her Neck forward if do she nearly goes 
in the fits, i dont know what it is the 
matter with Her myself. But if you see 
Her you would know what the matter with 
Her. Please send a Word By the Bearer 
what gives you this note and let me know 
where you will have time to come down to 
my House, i lives down the Bay a Place 
called Berry Head. 

"What have you been doing since?" 
Dr. Grenfell has not been idle. There is 
now a mission hospital at St. Anthony, near 
the extreme northeast point of the New- 
foundland coast. There is another, well- 
equipped and commodious, at Battle Har- 
bour — a rocky island lying out from the 
Labrador coast near the Strait of Belle Isle 
— which is open the year round ; when the 
writer was last on the coast, it was in 
charge of Dr. Cluny McPherson, a coura- 
geous young physician, Newfoundland-born, 
who went six hundred miles up the coast by 
dog-team in the dead of winter, finding shel- 
ter where he might, curing whom he could 



54 DK. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

— everywhere seeking out those who needed 
him, caring not a whit, it appears, for the 
peril and hardship of the long white road. 
There is a third at Indian Harbour, half- 
way up the coast, which is open through 
the fishing season. It is conducted with 
the care and precision of a London hospital 
— admirably kept, well-ordered, efficient. 
The physician in charge is Dr. George H. 
Simpson — a wiry, keen, brave little English- 
man, who goes about in an open boat, what- 
ever the distance, whatever the weather ; he 
is a man of splendid courage and sympathy : 
the fishing-folk love him for his kind heart 
and for the courage with which he responds 
to their every call. There is also the little 
hospital steamer Strathcona, in which Dr. 
Grenfell makes the round of all the coast, 
from the time of the break-up until the fall 
gales have driven the fishing-schooners 
home to harbour. 



VI 

FAITH and DUTY 

WHEN Dr. Grenfell first appeared 
on the coast, I am told, the folk 
thought him a madman of some 
beniffn description. He knew nothing of 
the reefs, the tides, the currents, cared noth- 
ing, apparently, for the winds ; he sailed 
with the confidence and reckless courage of 
a Labrador skipper. Fearing at times to 
trust his schooner in unknown waters, he 
went about in a whale-boat, and so hard did 
he drive her that he wore her out in a single 
season. She was capsized with all hands, 
once driven out to sea, many times nearly 
swamped, once blown on the rocks ; never 
before was a boat put to such tasks on that 
coast, and at the end of it she was wrecked 
beyond repair. E'ext season he appeared 
with a little steam-launch, the Princess May 
— ^her beam was eight feet ! — in which he 
55 



56 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

not only journeyed from St. Johns to Lab- 
rador, to the astonishment of the whole 
colony, but sailed the length of that bitter 
coast, passiDg into the gulf and safely out 
again, and pushing to the very farthest set- 
tlements in the north. Late in the fall, upon 
the return journey to St. Johns in stormy 
weather, she was reported lost, and many a 
skipper, I suppose, wondered that she had 
lived so long ; but she weathered a gale that 
bothered the mail-boat, and triumphantly 
made St. Johns, after as adventurous a voy- 
age, no doubt, as ever a boat of her measure 
survived. 

"Sure," said a skipper, "I don't know 
how she done it. The Lord," he added, 
piously, "must kape an eye on that 



There is a new proverb on the coast. The 
folk say, when a great wind blows, " This'll 
bring Grenfell ! " Often it does. He is im- 
patient of delay, fretted by inaction ; a gale 
is the wind for him — a wind to take him 



FAITH AND DUTY 67 

swiftly towards the place ahead. Had he 
been a weakling, he would long ago have 
died on the coast ; had he been a coward, a 
multitude of terrors would long ago have 
driven him to a life ashore; had he been 
anything but a true man and tender, indeed, 
he would long ago have retreated under the 
suspicion and laughter of the folk. But he 
has outsailed the Labrador skippers — out- 
dared them — done deeds of courage under 
their very eyes that they would shiver to 
contemplate, — never in a foolhardy spirit; 
always with the object of kindly service. 
So he has the heart and willing hand of 
every honest man on the Labrador — and of 
none more than of the men of his crew, who 
take the chances with him ; they are wholly 
devoted. 

One of his engineers, for example, once 
developed the unhappy habit of knocking 
the cook down. 

" You must keep your temper," said the 
doctor. " This won't do, you know." 

But there came an unfortunate day when, 



58 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 

being out of temper, the engineer again 
knocked the cook down. 

" This is positively disgraceful ! " said the 
doctor. " I can't keep a quarrelsome fellow 
aboard the mission-ship. Remember that, 
if you will, when next you feel tempted to 
strike the cook." 

The engineer protested that he would 
never again lay hands on the cook, what- 
ever the provocation. But again he lost his 
temper, and down went the poor cook, flat 
on his back. 

** I'll discharge you," said the doctor, an- 
grily, " at the end of the cruise ! " 

The engineer pleaded for another chance. 
He was denied. From day to day he re- 
newed his plea, but to no purpose, and at 
last the crew came to the conclusion that 
something really ought to be done for the 
engineer, who was visibly fretting himself 
thin. 

" Very well," said the doctor to the en- 
gineer ; " I'll make this agreement with you. 
If ever again you knock down the cook, I'll 



FAITH AND DUTY 69 

put you ashore at the first land we come to, 
and you may get back to St. Johns as best 
you can." 

It was a hard alternative. The doctor is 
not a man to give or take when the bargain 
has been struck ; the engineer knew that he 
would surely go ashore somewhere on that 
desolate coast, whether the land was a bar- 
ren island or a frequented harbour, if ever 
again the cook tempted him beyond endur- 
ance. 

" I'll stand by it, sir," he said, neverthe- 
less ; " for I don't want to leave you." 

In the course of time the Princess May 
was wrecked or worn out. Then came the 
Julia Sheridan^ thirty -five feet long, which 
the mission doctor bought while she yet lay 
under water from her last wreck ; he raised 
her, refitted her with what money he had, 
and pursued his venturesome and beneficent 
career, until she, too, got beyond so hard a 
service. Many a gale she weathered, off 
" the worst coast in the world " — often, in- 



60 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

deed, in thick, wild weather, the doctor him- 
self thought the little craft would go down ; 
but she is now happily superannuated, car- 
rying the mail in the quieter waters of Ham- 
ilton Inlet. iN'ext came the SirBonald — a 
stout ship, which in turn disappeared, 
crushed in the ice. The 8trathcona, with a 
hospital amidships, is now doing duty ; and 
she will continue to go up and down the 
coast, in and out of the inlets, until she in 
her turn finds the ice and the wind and the 
rocks too much for her. 

" 'Tis bound t' come, soon or late," said a 
cautious friend of the mission. " He drives 
her too hard. He've a right t' do what he 
likes with his own life, I s'pose, but he've a 
call t' remember that the crew has folks t' 
home." 

But the mission doctor is not inconsider- 
ate ; he is in a hurry — the coast is long, the 
season short, the need such as to wring a 
man's heart. Every new day holds an op- 
portunity for doing a good deed — not if he 



FAITH AND DUTY 61 

dawdles in the harbours when a gale is 
abroad, bat only if he passes swiftly from 
place to place, with a brave heart meeting 
the dangers as they come. He is the only 
doctor to visit the Labrador shore of the 
Gulf, the Strait shore of Newfoundland, 
the populous east coast of the northern 
peninsula of Newfoundland, the only doc- 
tor known to the Esquimaux and poor " live- 
yeres " of the northern coast of Labrador, 
the only doctor most of the " liveyeres " and 
green-fish catchers of the middle coast can 
reach, save the hospital physician at Indian 
Harbour. He has a round of three thousand 
miles to make. It is no wonder that he 
" drives " the little steamer — even at full 
steam, with all sail spread (as I have known 
him to do), when the fog is thick and the 
sea is spread with great bergs. 

"I'm in a hurry," he said, with an impa- 
tient sigh. " The season's late. We must 
get along." 

We fell in with him at Eed Kay in the 



62 DE. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

Strait, in the thick of a heavy gale from 
the northeast. The wind had blown for two 
days ; the sea was running high, and still 
fast rising ; the schooners were huddled in 
the harbours, with all anchors out, many of 
them hanging on for dear life, though they 
lay in shelter. The sturdy little coastal 
boat, with four times the strength of the 
Strathcona^ had made hard work of it that 
day — there was a time when she but held 
her own off a lee shore in the teeth of the 
big wind. 

It was drawing on towards night when the 
doctor came aboard for a surgeon from Bos- 
ton, a specialist, for whom he had been wait- 
ing. 

" I see you've steam up," said the captain 
of the coastal boat. "I hope you're not 
going out in this, doctor ! " 

" I have some patients at the Battle Har- 
bour Hospital, waiting for our good friend 
from Boston," said the doctor, briskly. 
"I'm in a hurry. Oh, yes, I'm going 
out ! " 



FAITH AND DUTY 63 

" For God's sake, don't ! " said the captain 
earnestly. 

The doctor's eye chanced to fall on the 
gentleman from Boston, who was bending 
over his bag — a fine, fearless fellow, whom 
the prospect of putting out in that chip of a 
steamer would not have perturbed, though 
the doctor may then not have known it. 
At any rate, as though bethinking himself 
of something half forgotten, he changed his 
mind of a sudden. 

" Oh, very well," he said. " I'll wait un- 
til the gale blows out." 

He managed to wait a day — no longer ; 
and the wind was still wild, the sea higher 
than ever ; there was ice in the road, and 
the fog was dense. Then out he went into 
the thick of it. He bumped an iceberg, 
scraped a rock, fairly smothered the steamer 
with broken water; and at midnight — the 
most marvellous feat of all — he crept into 
Battle Harbour through a narrow, difficult 
passage, and dropped anchor off the mission 
wharf. 



64 DE. GKENFELL^S PAEISH 

Doubtless he enjoyed the experience 
while it lasted — and promptly forgot it, 
as being commonplace. I have heard of 
him, caught in the night in a winter's 
gale of wind and snow, threading a 
tumultuous, reef-strewn sea, his skipper 
at the wheel, himself on the bowsprit, 
guiding the ship by the flash and roar 
of breakers, while the sea tumbled over 
him. If the chance passenger who told 
me the story is to be believed, upon that 
trying occasion the doctor had the "time 
of his life." 

"All that man wanted," I told the 
doctor subsequently, " was, as he says, * to 
bore a hole in the bottom of the ship and 
crawl out.' " 

"Why!" exclaimed the doctor, with a 
laugh of surprise. " He wasn't frightened, 
was he ? " 

Fear of the sea is quite incomprehensible 
to this man. The passenger was very much 
frightened; he vowed never to sail with 
"that devil" again. But the doctor is 



FAITH AND DUTY 65 

very far from being a dare-devil ; though 
he is, to be sure, a man altogether un- 
afraid ; it seems to me that his heart can 
never have known the throb of fear. Per- 
haps that is in part because he has a blessed 
lack of imagination, in part, perhaps, be- 
cause he has a body as sound as ever God 
gave to a man, and has used it as a man 
should; but it is chiefly because of his 
simple and splendid faith that he is an 
instrument in God's hands — God's to do 
with as He will, as he would say. His 
faith is exceptional, I am sure — childlike, 
steady, overmastering, and withal, if I may 
so characterize it, healthy. It takes some- 
thing such as the faith he has to move a 
man to run a little steamer at full speed in 
the fog when there is ice on every hand. 
It is hardly credible, but quite true, and 
short of the truth : neither wind nor ice 
nor fog, nor all combined, can keep the 
Strathcona in harbour when there comes a 
call for help from beyond. The doctor 
clambers cheerfully out on the bowsprit 



m DR. GRENFELL^S PARISH 

and keeps both eyes open. " As the Lord 
wills," says he, " whether for wreck or 
service. I am about His business." 

It is a sublime expression of the old 
faith. 



D 



YII 

THE LIJ^EYERE 

OCTOR GRENFELL'S patients are 
of three classes. There is first the 
" liveyere " — the inhabitant of the 
Labrador coast — the most ignorant and 
wretched of them all. There is the New- 
foundland "outporter" — the small fisher- 
man of the remoter coast, who must depend 
wholly upon his hook and line for subsist- 
ence. There is the Labradorman — the 
Newfoundland fisherman of the better 
class, who fishes the Labrador coast in 
the summer season and returns to his 
home port when the snow begins to fly 
in the fall. Some description of these 
three classes is here offered, that the 
reader may understand the character and 
condition of the folk among whom Dr. 
Grenfell labours. 

67 



68 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 

" As a permanent abode of civilized man," 
it is written in a very learned if somewhat 
old-fashioned work, "Labrador is, on the 
whole, one of the most uninviting spots on 
the face of the earth." That is putting it 
altogether too delicately ; there should be 
no qualification ; the place is a brutal deso- 
lation. The weather has scoured the coast 
— a thousand miles of it — as clean as an old 
bone : it is utterly sterile, save for a tuft or 
two of hardy grass and wide patches of crisp 
moss; bare gray rocks, low in the south, 
towering and craggy in the north, every- 
where blasted by frost, lie in billowy hills 
between the froth and clammy mist of the 
sea and the starved forest at the edge of 
the inland wilderness. The interior is for- 
bidding ; few explorers have essayed adven- 
ture there ; but the Indians — an expiring 
tribe — and trappers who have caught sight 
of the " height of land " say that it is for 
the most part a vast table-land, barren, 
strewn with enormous boulders, scarce in 
game, swarming with flies, with vegetation 



THE LIVEYEEE 69 

surviving only in the hollows and ravines — 
a sullen, forsaken waste. 

Those who dwell on the coast are called 
" liveyeres " because they say, " Oh, ay, zur, 
I lives yere ! " in answer to the question. 
These are not to be confounded with the 
Newfoundland fishermen who sail the Lab- 
rador seas in the fishing season — an adven- 
turous, thrifty folk, bright-eyed, hearty in 
laughter — twenty-five thousand hale men 
and boys, with many a wife and maid, who 
come and return again. Less than four 
thousand poor folk have on the long coast 
the " permanent abode " of which the learned 
work speaks — much less, I should think, 
from the Strait of Belle Isle to Cape Chid- 
ley. It is an evil fate to be born there : the 
Newfoundlanders who went north from their 
better country, the Hudson Bay Company's 
servants who took wives from the natives, 
all the chance comers who procrastinated 
their escape, desperately wronged their pos- 
terity ; the saving circumstance is the very 
isolation of the dwelling-place — no man 



70 DK. GRENFELL^S PARISH 

knows, no man really knows, that elsewhere 
the earth is kinder to her children and fairer 
far than the wind-swept, barren coast to 
which he is used. They live content, bear- 
ing many children, in inclemency, in squalor, 
and, from time to time, in uttermost poverty 
— such poverty as clothes a child in a trouser 
leg and feeds babies and strong men alike 
on nothing but flour and water. They were 
born there : that is where they came from j 
that is why they live there. 

" 'Tis a short feast and a long famine," 
said a northern " liveyere," quite cheerfully ; 
to him it was just a commonplace fact of 
life. 

There are degrees of wretchedness : a 
frame cottage is the habitation of the rich 
and great where the poor live in turf huts ; 
and the poor subsist on roots and a paste of 
flour and water when the rich feast on salt 
junk. The folk who live near the Strait of 
Belle Isle and on the gulf shore may be in 
happier circumstances. To be sure, they 



THE LIVEYERE Yl 

know the pinch of famine ; but some — the 
really well-to-do — are clear of the over- 
shadowing dread of it. The " liveyeres " of 
the north dwell in huts, in lonely coves of 
the bays, remote even from neighbours as 
ill-cased as themselves ; there they live and 
laugh and love and suffer and die and bury 
their dead — alone. To the south, however, 
there are little settlements in the more 
sheltered harbours — the largest of not more 
than a hundred souls — where there is a de- 
gree of prosperity and of comfort ; potatoes 
are a luxury, but the flour-barrel is always 
full, the pork-barrel not always empty, and 
there are raisins in the duff on feast-days ; 
moreover, there are stoves in the white- 
washed houses (the northern " liveyere's " 
stove is more often than not a flat rock), 
beds to sleep in, muslin curtains in the little 
windows, and a flower, it may be, sprouting 
desperately in a red pot on the sill. That 
is the extreme of luxury — rare to be met 
with ; and it is at all times open to dissolu- 
tion by famine. 



72 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

"Sure, zur, last winter," a stout young 
fellow boasted, " we had all the grease us 
wanted ! " 

It is related of a thrifty settler named 
Olliver, however, who lived with his wife 
and five children at Big Bight, — he was a 
man of superior qualities, as the event 
makes manifest, — that, having come close 
to the pass of starvation at the end of a 
long winter, he set out afoot over the hills 
to seek relief from his nearest neighbour, 
forty miles away. But there was no relief 
to be had ; the good neighbour had already 
given away all that he dared spare, and 
something more. Twelve miles farther on 
he was again denied; it is said that the 
second neighbour mutely pointed to his 
flour-barrel and his family — which was 
quite suflicient for Olliver, who thereupon 
departed to a third house, where his fortune 
was no better. Perceiving then that he 
must depend upon the store of food in his 
own house, which was insufficient to sup- 
port the lives of all, he returned home, sent 



THE LIVEYERE 73 

his wife and eldest son and eldest daughter 
away on a pretext, despatched his three 
youngest children with an axe, and shot 
himself. As he had foreseen, wife, daugh- 
ter, and son survived until the " break-up " 
brought food within their reach; and the 
son was a well-grown boy, and made a 
capable head of the house thereafter. 

The " liveyere " is a fisherman and trap- 
per. In the summer he catches cod; in 
the winter he traps the fox, otter, mink, 
lynx, and marten, and sometimes he shoots 
a bear, white or black, and kills a wolf. 
The "planter," who advances the salt to 
cure the fish, takes the catch at the end of the 
season, giving in exchange provisions at an 
incredible profit ; the Hudson Bay Company 
takes the fur, giving in exchange provisions 
at an even larger profit ; for obvious reasons, 
both aim (there are exceptions, of course) to 
keep the " liveyere " in debt — which is not 
by any means a difficult matter, for the 
"liveyere" is both shiftless and (what is 



74 DE. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 

more to the point) illiterate. So it comes 
about that what he may have to eat and 
wear depends upon the will of the "planter" 
and of the company ; and when for his ill- 
luck or his ill-will both cast him off — which 
sometimes happens — he looks starvation in 
the very face. A silver fox, of good fur and 
acceptable colour, is the " liveyere's " great 
catch; no doubt his most ecstatic night- 
mare has to do with finding one fast in his 
trap; but when, "more by chance than 
good conduct," as they say, he has that 
heavenly fortune (the event is of the 
rarest), the company pays sixty or eighty 
dollars for that which it sells abroad for 
$600. Of late, however, the free-traders 
seem to have established a footing on the 
coast ; their stay may not be long, but for 
the moment, at any rate, the "'liveyere" 
may dispose of his fur to greater advantage 
— if he dare. 

The earth yields the " liveyere " nothing 
but berries, which are abundant, and, in 
midsummer, " turnip tops " ; and as numer- 



THE LIVEYERE 75 

ous dogs are needed for winter travelling — 
wolfish creatures, savage, big, famished — 
no domestic animals can be kept. There 
was once a man who somehow managed for 
a season to possess a pig and a sheep ; he 
marooned his dogs on an island half a mile 
off the coast; unhappily, however, there 
blew an off-shore wind in the night, and 
next morning neither the pig nor the sheep 
was to be found ; the dogs were engaged in 
innocent diversions on the island, but there 
was evidence sufficient on their persons, so 
to speak, to convict them of the depreda- 
tion in any court of justice. There are no 
cows on the coast, no goats, — consequently 
no additional milk-supply for babies, — who 
manage from the beginning, however, to 
thrive on bread and salt beef, if put to the 
necessity. There are no pigs — there is one 
pig, I believe, — no sheep, no chickens ; and 
the first horses to be taken to the sawmill 
on Hamilton Inlet so frightened the natives 
that they scampered in every direction for 
their lives whenever the team came near, 



76 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

crying : " Look out ! The harses is comin ' ! " 
The caribou are too far inland for most of 
the settlers ; but at various seasons (exclud- 
ing such times as there is no game at all) 
there are to be had grouse, partridge, geese, 
eider-duck, puffin, gulls, loon and petrel, 
bear, arctic hare, and bay seal, which are 
shot with marvellously long and old guns — 
some of them ancient flintlocks. 

ITotwithstanding all, the folk are large 
and hardy — capable of withstanding cruel 
hardship and deprivation. 

In summer-time the weather is blistering 
hot inland ; and on the coast it is more often 
than not wet, foggy, blustering — bitter 
enough for the man from the south, who 
shivers as he goes about. Innumerable ice- 
bergs drift southward, scraping the coast as 
they go, and patches of snow lie in the hol- 
lows of the coast hills — midwa}'' between 
Battle Harbour and Cape Chidley there is a 
low headland called Snowy Point because 
the snow forever lies upon it. But warm, 
sunny days are to be counted upon in August 



THE LIVEYERE TT 

— days when the sea is quiet, the sky deep 
blue, the rocks bathed in yellow sunlight, 
the air clear and bracing ; at such times it 
is good to lie on the high heads and look 
away out to sea, dreaming the while. In 
winter, storm and intense cold make most 
of the coast uninhabitable ; the " liveyeres " 
retire up the bays and rivers, bag and bag- 
gage, not only to escape the winds and bit- 
ter cold, but to be nearer the supply of game 
and fire-wood. They live in little " tilts " — 
log huts of one large square room, with 
" bunks " at each end for the women-folk, 
and a "cockloft" above for the men and 
lads. It is very cold; frost forms on the 
walls, icicles under the " bunks " ; the ther- 
mometer frequently falls to fifty degrees be- 
low zero, which, as you may be sure, is ex- 
ceedingly cold near the sea. ]S"or can a man 
do much heavy work in the woods, for the 
perspiration freezes under his clothing. Im- 
poverished families have no stoves — merely 
an arrangement of flat stones, with an open- 
ing in the roof for the escape of the smoke, 



78 DE. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 

with which they are quite content if only they 
have enough flour to make hard bread for all. 
It goes without saying that there is neither 
butcher, baker, nor candlestick-maker on the 
coast. Every man is his own bootmaker, 
tailor, and what not ; there is not a trade or 
profession practiced anywhere. There is no 
resident doctor, save the mission doctors, one 
of whom is established at Battle Harbour, and 
with a dog-team makes a toilsome journey 
up the coast in the dead of winter, relieving 
whom he can. There is no public building, 
no municipal government, no road. There is 
no lawyer, no constable ; and I very much 
doubt that there is a parson regularly sta- 
tioned among the whites beyond Battle Har- 
bour, with the exception of the Moravian 
missionaries. They are scarce enough, at any 
rate, for the folk in a certain practical way to 
feel the hardship of their absence. Dr. Gren- 
f ell tells of landing late one night in a lonely 
harbour where three "couples wanted marry- 
ing." They had waited many years for the 
opportunity. It chanced that the doctor was 



THE LIVEYEEE 79 

entertaining a minister on the cruise ; so one 
couple determined at once to return to the 
ship with him. "The minister," says the 
doctor, "decided that pronouncing the banns 
might be dispensed with in this case. He 
went ahead with the ceremony, for the 
couple had three children already ! " 

The "liveyere" is of a sombrely relig- 
ious turn of mind — his creed as harsh and 
gloomy as the land he lives in ; he is super- 
stitious as a savage as well, and an incorri- 
gible fatalist, all of which is not hard to 
account for : he is forever in the midst of 
vast space and silence, face to face with 
dread and mysterious forces, and in conflict 
with wind and sea and the changing season, 
which are irresistible and indifferent. 

Jared was young, lusty, light-hearted; 
but he lived in the fear and dread of hell. 
I had known that for two days. 

" The flies, zur," said he to the sportsman, 
whose hospitality I was enjoying, "was 
wonderful bad the day." 



80 DK. GRENFELL^S PAEISH 

We were twelve miles inland, fishing a 
small stream; and we were now in the 
" tilt," at the end of the day, safe from the 
swarming, vicious black-flies. 

"Yes," the sportsman replied, emphatic- 
ally. " I've suffered the tortures of the 
damned this day ! " 

Jared burst into a roar of laughter — as 
sudden and violent as a thunderclap. 

"What you laughing at?" the sports- 
man demanded, as he tenderly stroked his 
swollen neck. 

" Tartures o' the damned ! " Jared gasped. 
" Sure, if thafs all 'tis, I'll jack 'asy about 
it!" 

He laughed louder — reckless levity; but 
I knew that deep in his heart he would be 
infinitely relieved could he believe — could 
he only make sure — that the punishment of 
the wicked was no worse than an eternity 
of fighting with poisonous insects. 

"Ay," he repeated, ruefully, "if that's 
all 'twas, 'twould not trouble me much." 



THE LIVEYERE 81 

The graveyard at Battle Harbour is in a 
sheltered hollow near the sea. It is a green 
spot — the one, perhaps, on the island — and 
they have enclosed it with a high board 
fence. Men have fished from that harbour 
for a hundred years and more — but there 
are not many graves ; why, I do not know. 
The crumbling stones, the weather-beaten 
boards, the sprawling ill-worded inscrip- 
tions, are all, in their way, eloquent : 



"l^ARA It 


^^MB^ 


DfP]-H£ FOl^rfr 


HACejl fti,f 


V/\R1/ tiOQe^ 


iS9l 



" Sarah Combe died the fourth of August, 1881, aged 
31 years." 



82 DE. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

There is another, better carved, somewhat 
better spelled, but quite as interesting and 
luminous : 

In 

Memory of John 

Hill who Died 

December 30 1890 

Aged 34 

Weep not dear Parents 
For your lost tis my 
Etamel gain May 
May Crist you all take up 
The crost that we 
Shuld meat again 

These things are, indeed, eloquent — of 
ignorance, of poverty; but no less elo- 
quent of sorrow and of love. The Lab- 
rador "liveyere" is kin with the whole 
wide world. 



YIII 
IVITH The FLEET 

I'N the early spring — when the sunlight 
is yellow and the warm winds blow 
and the melting snow drips over the 
cliffs and runs in little rivulets from the 
barren hills — in the thousand harbours of 
Newfoundland the great fleet is made ready 
for the long adventure upon the Labrador 
coast. The rocks echo the noise of hammer 
and saw and mallet and the song and shout 
of the workers. The new schooners — build- 
ing the winter long at the harbour side — 
are hurried to completion. The old craft — 
the weather-beaten, ragged old craft, which, 
it may be, have dodged the reefs and out- 
lived the gales of forty seasons — are fitted 
with new spars, patched with new canvas 
and rope, calked anew, daubed anew and, 
thus refitted, float brave enough on the 

quiet harbour water. There is no end to 
83 



84 DK. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

the bustle of labour on ships and nets — no 
end to the clatter of planning. From the 
skipper of the ten-ton First Venture, who 
sails with a crew of sons bred for the pur- 
pose, to the powerful dealer who supplies on 
shares a fleet of seventeen fore-and-afters 
manned from the harbours of a great bay, 
there is hope in the hearts of all. "What- 
ever the last season, every man is to make 
a good " voyage " now. This season — this 
season — there is to be fish a-plenty on the 
Labrador ! 

The future is bright as the new spring 
days. Aunt Matilda is to have a bonnet 
with feathers — when Skipper Thomas gets 
home from the Labrador. Little Johnny 
Tatt, he of the crooked back, is to know 
again the virtue of Pike's Pain Compound, 
at a dollar a bottle, warranted to cure — 
when daddy gets home from the Labrador. 
Skipper BilPs Lizzie, plump, blushing, merry- 
eyed, is to wed Jack Lute o' Burnt Arm — 
when Jack comes back from the Labrador. 
Every man's heart, and, indeed, most men's 



WITH THE FLEET 85 

fortunes, are in the venture. The man who 
has nothing has yet the labour of his hands. 
Be he skipper, there is one to back his skill 
and honesty ; be he hand, there is no lack 
of berths to choose from. Skippers stand 
upon their record and schooners upon their 
reputation; it's take your choice, for the 
hands are not too many : the skippers are 
timid or bold, as God made them ; the 
schooners are lucky or not, as Fate deter- 
mines. Every man has his chance. John 
Smith o' Twillingate provisions the L\icky 
Queen and gives her to the penniless Skip- 
per Jim o' Yellow Tickle on shares. Old 
Tom Tatter o' Salmon Cove, with plea and 
argument, persuades the Four Arms trader 
to trust him once again with the Busy Bee. 
He'll get the fish this time. Nar a doubt 
of it ! H^ll be home in August — this year 
— ^loaded to the gunwale. God knows who 
pays the cash when the fish fail! God 
knows how the folk survive the disap- 
p()intment! It is a greut lottery of hope 
and fortune. 



86 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 

When, at last, word comes south that the 
ice is clearing from the coast, the vessels 
spread their little wings to the first favour- 
ing winds; and in a week — ^two weeks or 
three — the last of the Labradormen have 
gone " down north." 

Dr. Grenfell and his workers find much 
to do among these men and women and 
children. 

At Indian Harbour where the Strathcona 
lay at anchor, I went aboard the schooner 
Jolly Crew. It was a raw, foggy day, with 
a fresh northeast gale blowing, and a high 
sea running outside the harbour. They 
were splitting fish on deck; the skiff was 
just in from the trap—she was still wet 
with spray. 

" I sails with me sons an' gran'sons, zur," 
said the skipper, smiling. " Sure, I be a old 
feller t' be down the Labrador, isn't I, zur ? " 

He did not mean that. He was proud of 
his age and strength — glad that he was still 
able"t'beatthefishin'." 



WITH THE FLEET 87 

"'Tis a wonder you've lived through it 
all," said I. 

He laughed. " An' why, zur ? " he asked. 

" Many's the ship wrecked on this coast," 
I answered. 

"Oh no, zur," said he; "not so many, 
zur, as you might think. Down this way, 
zur, we Jcnows how f sail ! " 

That was a succinct explanation of very 
much that had puzzled me. 

" Ah, well," said I, " 'tis a hard life." 

" Hard ? " he asked, doubtfully. 

"Yes," I answered; "'tis a hard life — 
the fishin'." 

"Oh no, zur," said he, quietly, looking 
up from his work. " 'Tis just — ^just life ! " 

They do, indeed, know how "f sail." 
The Newfoundland government, niggardly 
and utterly independable when the good of 
the fisherf oik is concerned, of whatever com- 
plexion the government may chance to be, 
but prodigal to an extraordinary degree 
when individual self-interests are at stake — 



88 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

this is a delicate way of putting an unpleas- 
ant truth, — keeps no light burning beyond 
the Strait of Belle Isle ; the best it does, I 
believe, is to give wrecked seamen free pas- 
sage home. Under these difficult circum- 
stances, no seamen save E'ewfoundlanders, 
who are the most skillful and courageous of 
all, could sail that coast : and they only be- 
cause they are born to follow the sea — there 
is no escape for them — and are bred to sail- 
ing from their earliest years. 

" What you going to be when you grow 
up ? " I once asked a lad on the far north- 
east coast. 

He looked at me in vast astonishment. 

" What you going to he, what you going 
to do,^^ I repeated, " when you grow up ? " 

Still he did not comprehend. " Eh ? " he 
said. 

" What you going to work at," said I, in 
desperation, " when you're a man ? " 

" Oh, zur," he answered, understanding at 
last, " I isn't clever enough t' be a parson ! " 

And so it went without saying that he 



WITH THE FLEET 89 

was to fish for a living ! It is no wonder, 
then, that the skippers of the fleet know 
" how t' sail." The remarkable quality of 
the sea-captains who come from among them 
impressivel}^ attests the fact — not only their 
quality as sailors, but as men of spirit and 
proud courage. There is one — now a cap- 
tain of a coastal boat on the Newfoundland 
shore — who takes his steamer into a ticklish 
harbour of a thick, dark night, when every- 
thing is black ahead and roundabout, steer- 
ing only by the echo of the ship's whistle ! 
There is another, a confident seaman, a 
bluff, high-spirited fellow, who was once de- 
layed by bitter winter weather — an inky 
night, with ice about, the snow flying, the 
seas heavy with frost, the wind bio wing a gale. 

" Where have you been ? " they asked him, 
sarcastically, from the head office. 

The captain had been on the bridge all 
night. 

" Berry-picking," was his laconic despatch 
in reply. 

There is another — also the captain of a 



90 DR. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 

coastal steamer — who thought it wise to lie 
in harbour through a stormy night in the 
early winter. 

"What detains you?" came a message 
from the head office. 

" It is not a fit night for a vessel to be at 
sea," the captain replied ; and thereupon he 
turned in, believing the matter to be at an end. 

The captain had been concerned for his 
vessel — not for his life ; nor yet for his com- 
fort. But the underling at the head office 
misinterpreted the message. 

"What do we pay you for?" he tele- 
graphed. 

So the captain took the ship out to sea. 
Men say that she went out of commission 
the next day, and that it cost the company 
a thousand dollars to refit her. 

" A dunderhead," say the folk, " can cotch 
fish ; but it takes a man t' find un." It is a 
chase ; and, as the coast proverb has it, " the 
fish have no bells." It is estimated that 
there are 7,000 square miles of fishing-banks 



WITH THE FLEET 91 

off the Labrador coast. There will be fish 
somewhere — not everywhere; not every man 
will " use his salt " (the schooners go north 
loaded with salt for curing) or "get his load." 
In the beginning — this is when the ice first 
clears away — there is a race for berths. It 
takes clever, reckless sailing and alert action 
to secure the best. I am reminded of a 
skipper who by hard driving to windward 
and good luck came first of all to a favoura- 
ble harbour. It was then night, and his 
crew was weary, so he put off running out 
his trap-leader until morning ; but in the 
night the wind changed, and when he awoke 
at dawn there were two other schooners 
lying quietly at anchor near by and the 
berths had been " staked." When the traps 
are down, there follows a period of anxious 
waiting. Where are the fish ? There are 
no telegraph-lines on that coast. The news 
must be spread by word of mouth. When, 
at last, it comes, there is a sudden change 
of plan — a wild rush to the more favoured 
grounds. 



92 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

It is in this scramble that many a skipper 
makes his great mistake. I was talking 
with a disconsolate young fellow in a north- 
ern harbour where the fish were running 
thick. The schooners were fast loading ; 
but he had no berth, and was doing but 
poorly with the passing days. 

" If I hadn't — if I only hadn't — took up 
me trap when I did," said he, "I'd been 
loaded an' off home. Sure, zur, would you 
believe it ? but I had the berth off the point. 
Off the point — the berth off the point ! " he 
repeated, earnestly, his eyes wide. "An', 
look ! I hears they's a great run o' fish t' 
Cutthroat Tickle. So I up with me trap, for 
I'd been gettin' nothin' ; an' — an' — would you 
believe it ? but the man that put his down 
where I took mine up took a hundred 
quintal^ out o' that berth next marnin'! 
An' he'll load," he groaned, "afore the 
week's out ! " 

' A quintal is, roughly, a hundred pounds. One hun- 
dred quintals of green fish are equal, roughly, to thirty 
of dry, which, at $3, would amount to |90. 



WITH THE FLEET 93 

When the fish are running, the work is 
mercilessly hard ; it is kept up night and 
day; there is no sleep for man or child, 
save, it may be, an hour's slumber where 
they toil, just before dawn. The schooner 
lies at anchor in the harbour, safe enough 
from wind and sea ; the rocks, surrounding 
the basin in which she lies, keep the har- 
bour water placid forever. But the men set 
the traps in the open sea, somewhere off the 
heads, or near one of the outlying islands ; 
it may be miles from the anchorage of the 
schooner. They put out at dawn — before 
dawn, rather ; for they aim to be at the trap 
just when the light is strong enough for the 
hauling. When the skiff is loaded, they put 
back to harbour in haste, throw the fish on 
deck, split them, salt them, lay them neatly 
in the hold, and put out to the trap again. 
I have seen the harbours — then crowded 
with fishing-craft — fairly ablaze with light 
at midnight. Torches were flaring on the 
decks and in the turf hut on the rocks 
ashore. The night was quiet; there was 



94 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 

not a sound from the tired workers ; but the 
flaring lights made known that the wild, 
bleak, far-away place — a basin in the midst 
of barren, uninhabited hills — was still astir 
with the day's work. 

At such times, the toil at the oars, and at 
the splitting-table,^ whether on deck or in 
the stages — and the lack of sleep, and the 
icy winds and cold salt spray — is all bitter 
cruel to suffer. The Labrador fisherman 
will not readily admit that he lives a hard 
life ; but if you suggest that when the fish 
are running it may be somewhat more toil- 
some than lives lived elsewhere, he will 
grant you something. 

" Oh, ay," he'll drawl, " when the fish is 
runnin'. His a bit hard." 

I learned from a child — he was merry, 
brave, fond of the adventure— that fishing 
is a pleasant business in the sunny midsum- 
mer months ; but that when, late in the fall, 
the skiff puts out to the trap at dawn, it is 

1 A "clever hand" can split— tliat is, clean— thirty 
fish in a minute. 



WITH THE FLEET 95 

wise to plunge one's hands deep in the 
water before taking the oars, no matter 
how much it hurts, for one's wrists are then 
covered with salt-water sores and one's 
palms are cracked, even though one take 
the precaution of wearing a brass chain — 
that, oh, yes ! it is wise to plunge one's 
hands in the cold water, as quick as may 
be ; for thus one may " limber 'em up " be- 
fore the trap is reached. 

"'Tis not hard, now," said he. "But, 
oh — 00 — 00 ! when the big nor'easters blow! 
Oo — 00 ! " he repeated, with a shrug and a 
sage shake of the head; "'tis won-der-ful 
hard those times ! " 

The return is small. The crews are com- 
prised of from ^Ye to ten men, with, occa- 
sionally, a sturdy maid for cook, to whom 
is given thirty dollars for her season's work ; 
some old hands will sail on no ship with a 
male cook, for, as one of them said, " Sure, 
some o' thim min can't boil water without 
burnin' it ! " A good season's catch is one 
hundred quintals of dry fish a man. A 



96 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

simple calculation— with some knowledge 
of certain factors which I need not state — 
makes it plain that a man must himself 
catch, as his share of the trap, 30,000 fish if 
he is to net a living wage. If his return is 
$250 he is in the happiest fortune — richly 
rewarded, beyond his dreams, for his sum- 
mer's work. One-half of that is sufficient 
to give any modest man a warm glow of 
content and pride. Often — it depends 
largely upon chance and the skill of his 
skipper — the catch is so poor that he must 
make the best of twenty-five or thirty 
dollars. It must not be supposed that the 
return is always in cash; it is usually in 
trade, which is quite a different thing — in 
Newfoundland. 

The schooners take many passengers 
north in the spring. Such are called 
"freighters" on the coast; they are put 
ashore at such harbours as they elect, and, 
for passage for themselves, families, and 



WITH THE FLEET 97 

gear, pay upon the return voyage twenty- 
five cents for every hundredweight of fish 
caught. As a matter of course, the vessels 
are preposterously overcrowded. Dr. Gren- 
fell tells of counting thirty-four men and 
sixteen women (no mention was made of 
children) aboard a nineteen-ton schooner, 
then on the long, rough voyage to the north. 
The men fish from the coast in small boats 
just as the more prosperous "green-fish 
catchers" put out from the schooners. 
Meantime, they live in mud huts, which 
are inviting or otherwise, as the women- 
folk go; some are damp, cave-like, ill- 
savoured, crowded; others are airy, cozy, 
the floors spread deep with powdered shell, 
the whole immaculately kept. When the 
party is landed, the women sweep out the 
last of the winter's snow, the men build 
great fires on the floors; indeed, the huts 
are soon ready for occupancy. At best, 
they are tiny places — much like children's 
playhouses. There was once a tall man 



98 DR. GRENFELKS PARISH 

who did not quite fit the sleeping place as- 
signed to him ; but with great good nature 
he cut a hole in the wall, built a miniature 
addition for his feet, and slept the summer 
through at comfortable full length. It is a 
great outing for the children; they romp 
on the rocks, toddle over the nearer hills, 
sleep in the sunshine ; but if they are eight 
years old, as one said — or well grown at 
five or seven — they must do their little 
share of work. 

"Withal, the Labradormen are of a simple, 
God-fearing, clean-lived, hardy race of men. 
There was once a woman who made boast 
of her high connection in England, as 
women will the wide world over ; and when 
she was questioned concerning the position 
the boasted relative occupied, replied, " Oh, 
he's Superintendent o' Foreign Govern- 
ments ! " There was an austere old Chris- 
tian who on a Sunday morning left his trap 
— ^his whole fortune — lie in the path of a 



WITH THE FLEET 99 

destroying iceberg rather than desecrate 
the Lord's day by taking it out of the 
water. Both political parties in New- 
foundland shamelessly deceive the credu- 
lous fisherfolk; there was a childlike old 
fellow who, when asked, "And what will 
you do if there is no fish?" confidently 
answered: "Oh, they's goin* t' be a new 
Gov'ment. He'll take care o' we ! " There 
was a sturdy son of the coast who deserted 
his schooner at sea and swam ashore. But 
he had mistaken a barren island for the main- 
land, which was yet far off ; and there he 
lived, without food, for twenty-seven days ! 
When he was picked up, his condition was 
such as may not be described (the Labrador 
fly is a vicious insect) ; he was unconscious, 
but he survived to fish many another 
season. 

The mail-boat picked up Skipper Thomas 
of Carbonear — then master of a loaded 
schooner — at a small harbour near the 



a.c>fC. 



100 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

Straits. His crew carried him aboard; 
for he was desperately ill, and wanted to 
die at home, where his children were. 

"He's wonderful bad," said one of the 
men. " He've consumption." 

" I'm just wantin' t' die at home," he said, 
again and again. "Just that — just where 
my children be ! " 

All hearts were with him in that last 
struggle — but no man dared hope ; for the 
old skipper had already beaten off death 
longer than death is wont to wait, and his 
strength was near spent. 

" Were you sick when you sailed for the 
Labrador in the spring ? " they asked him. 

" Oh, ay," said he ; "I were terrible bad 
then." 

" Then why," they said — " why did you 
come at all ? " 

They say he looked up in mild surprise. 
"I had t' make me livin'," he answered, 
simply. 

His coffin was knocked together on the 



WITH THE FLEET 101 

forward deck next moruing — with Carbo- 
near a day's sail beyond. 

The fleet goes home in the early fall. 
The schooners are loaded — some so low with 
the catch that the water washes into the 
scuppers. " You could wash your hands on 
her deck," is the skipper's proudest boast. 
The feat of seamanship, I do not doubt, is 
not elsewhere equalled. It is an inspiring 
sight to see the doughty little craft beating 
into the wind on a gray day. The harvest- 
ing of a field of grain is good to look upon ; 
but I think that there can be no more stir- 
ring sight in all the world, no sight more 
quickly to melt a man's heart, more deeply 
to move him to love men and bless God, 
than the sight of the Labrador fleet beating 
home loaded — toil done, dangers past ; the 
home port at the end of a run with a fair 
wind. The home-coming, I fancy, is much 
like the return of the viking ships to the old 
Norwegian harbours must have been. The 
lucky skippers strut the village roads with 



102 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

swelling chests, heroes in the sight of all ; 
the old men, long past their labour, listen to 
new tales and spin old yarns ; the maids and 
the lads renew their interrupted love-mak- 
ings. There is great rejoicing — feasting, 
merrymaking, hearty thanksgiving. 
Thanks be to God, the fleet's home ! 



IX 

On The FRENCH SHORE 

DOCTOE GEEISTFELL appears to 
have a peculiar affection for the 
outporters of what is locally known 
as the "French Shore" — that stretch of 
coast lying between Cape John and the 
northernmost point of Newfoundland : it is 
one section of the shore upon which the 
French have fishing rights. This is the real 
Newfoundland; to the writer there is no 
Newfoundland apart from that long strip of 
rock against which the sea forever breaks : 
none that is not of punt, of wave, of fish, 
of low sky and of a stalwart, briny folk. 
Indeed, though he has joyously lived weeks 
of blue weather in the outports, with the 
sea all a-ripple and flashing and the breeze 
blowing warm, in retrospect land and peo- 
ple resolve themselves into a rocky harbour 
and a sturdy little lad with a question — the 
harbour, gray and dripping wet, a cluster of 
whitewashed cottages perched on the rocks, 
103 



104 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

towards which a tiny, red-sailed punt is 
beating from the frothy open, with the white 
of breakers on either hand, while a raw 
wind lifts the fog from the black inland 
hills, upon which ragged patches of snow 
lie melting ; the lad, stout, frank-eyed, tow- 
headed, browned by the wind, bending over 
the splitting-table with a knife in his toil- 
worn young hand and the blood of cod 
dripping from his fingers, and looking wist- 
fully up, at last, to ask a question or two 
concerning certain old, disquieting mysteries. 
" Where do the tide go, zur, when 'e runs 
out ? " he plainted. " Where do 'e go, zur ? 
Sure, zur, you is able t' tell me that, isn't 
you?" 

So, in such a land — where, on some bleak 
stretches of coast, the potatoes are grown in 
imported English soil, where most gardens, 
and some graveyards, are made of earth 
scraped from the hollows of the hills, where 
four hundred and nineteen bushels of lean 
wheat are grown in a single year, and the 



ON THE FKENCH SHORE 105 

production of beef -cattle is insignificant as 
compared with the production of babies — in 
such a land there is nothing for the young 
man to do but choose his rock, build his lit- 
tle cottage and his flake and his stage, 
marry a maid of the harbour when the spring 
winds stir his blood, gather his potato patch, 
get a pig and a goat, and go fishing in his 
punt. And they do fish, have always fished 
since many generations ago the island was 
first settled by adventurous Devon men, and 
must continue to fish to the end of time. 
Out of a total male population of one hun- 
dred thousand, which includes the city-folk 
of St. Johns and an amazing proportion of 
babies and tender lads, about fifty-five thou- 
sand men and grown boys catch fish for a 
living. 

"Still an' all, they's no country in the 
world like this!" said the old skipper. 
" Sure, a man's set up in life when he haves 
a pig an' a punt an' a potato patch." 

" But have you ever seen another ? " I 
asked. 



106 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

" I've been so far as Saint Johns, zur, an' 
once t' the waterside o' Boston," was the 
surprising reply, " an' I'm thinkin' I knows 
what the world's like." 

So it is with most ^Newfoundlanders : they 
love their land with an intolerant preju- 
dice ; and most are content with the life they 
lead. " The ISTewfoundlander comes back," 
is a significant proverb of the outports ; and, 
" White Bay's good enough for me," said a 
fishwife to me once, when I asked her why 
she still remained in a place so bleak and 
barren, " for I've heered tell 'tis wonderful 
smoky an' n'isy 't Saint Johns." The life 
they live, and strangely love, is exceeding 
toilsome. Toil began for a gray-haired, 
bony-handed old woman whom I know when 
she was so young that she had to stand on 
a tub to reach the splitting-table ; when, too, 
to keep her awake and busy, late o' nights, 
her father would make believe to throw a 
bloody cod's head at her. It began for that 
woman's son when, at ^Ye or six years old, 
he was just able to spread the fish to dry on 



ON THE FRENCH SHORE lOY 

the flake, and continued in earnest, a year 
or two later, when first he was strong 
enough to keep the head of his father's punt 
up to the wind. But they seem not to know 
that fishing is a hard or dangerous employ- 
ment: for instance, a mild-eyed, crooked 
old fellow — he was a cheerful Methodist, 
too, and subject to " glory-fits " — who had 
fished from one harbour for sixty years, com- 
puted for me that he had put out to sea in 
his punt at least twenty thousand times, that 
he had been frozen to the seat of his punt 
many times, that he had been swept to sea 
with the ice-packs, six times, that he had 
weathered six hundred gales, great and 
small, and that he had been wrecked more 
times than he could " just mind " at the mo- 
ment ; yet he was the only old man ever I 
met who seemed honestly to wish that he 
might live his life over again ! 

The hook-and-line man has a lonely time 
of it. From earliest dawn, while the night 
yet lies thick on the sea, until in storm or 
calm or favouring breeze he makes harbour 



108 DK. GEENFELL'S PAKISH 

in the dusk, he lies off shore, fishing — toss- 
ing in the lop of the grounds, with the 
waves to balk and the wind to watch warily, 
while he tends his lines. There is no jolly 
companionship of the forecastle and turf hut 
for him — no new scene, no hilarious adven- 
ture ; nor has he the expectation of a proud re- 
turn to lighten his toil. In the little punt 
he has made with his own hands he is for- 
ever riding an infinite expanse, which, in 
" fish weather," is melancholy, or threaten- 
ing, or deeply solemn, as it may chance — all 
the while and all alone confronting the 
mystery and terrible immensity of the sea. 
It may be that he gives himself over to aim- 
less musing, or, even less happily, to ponder- 
ing certain dark mysteries of the soul ; and 
so it comes about that the " mad-house 't 
Saint Johns" is inadequate to accommo- 
date the poor fellows whom lonely toil has 
bereft of their senses — melancholiacs, idiots 
and maniacs " along o' religion." 

Notwithstanding all, optimism persists 
everywhere on the coast. One old fisher- 



ON THE FRENCH SHORE 109 

man counted himself favoured above most 
men because he had for years been able to 
afford the luxury of cream of tartar; and 
another, a brawny giant, confessed to hav- 
ing a disposition so pertinaciously happy 
that he had come to regard a merry heart as 
his besetting sin. Sometimes an off-shore 
gale puts an end to all the fishing ; some- 
times it is a sudden gust, sometimes a big 
wave, sometimes a confusing mist, more 
often long exposure to spray and shipped 
water and soggy winds. It was a sleety 
off-shore gale, coming at the end of a sunny, 
windless day, that froze or drowned thirty 
men off Trinity Bay in a single night ; and 
it was a mere puff on a " civil " evening — 
but a swift, wicked little puff, sweeping 
round Breakheart Head — that made a 
widow of Elizabeth Eideout o' Duck Cove 
and took her young son away. Often, how- 
ever, the hook-and-line man fishes his eighty 
years of life, and dies in his bed as cheer- 
fully as he has lived and as poor as he was 
born. 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK 

IT had been a race against the peril of 
fog and the discomfort of a wet night 
all the way from Hooping Harbour. 
"We escaped the scowl of the northeast, the 
gray, bitter wind and the sea it was fast 
fretting to a fury, when the boat rounded 
Canada Head and ran into the shelter of the 
bluffs at Englee — into the damp shadows 
sombrely gathered there. When the punt 
was moored to the stage-head, the fog had 
thickened the dusk into deep night, and the 
rain had soaked us to the skin. There was 
a light, a warm, yellow light, shining from 
a window, up along shore and to the west. 
We stumbled over an erratic footpath, which 
the folk of the place call " the roaad " — feel- 
ing for direction, chancing the steps, splash- 
ing through pools of water, tripping over 
sharp rocks. The whitewashed cottages of 

the village, set on the hills, were like the 
110 




THE WHITEWASHED COTTAGES ON THE HILLS" 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK 111 

ghosts of houses. They started into sight, 
hung suspended in the night, vanished as we 
trudged on. The folk were all abed — all 
save Elisha Duckworthy, that pious giant, 
who had been late beating in from the fish- 
ing grounds off the Head. It was Elisha 
who opened the door to our knock, and sent 
a growling, bristling dog back to his place 
with a gentle word. 

"Will you not " 

" Sure, sir," said Elisha, a smile spreading 
from his eyes to the very tip of his great 
beard, " 'twould be a hard man an' a bad 
Christian that would turn strangers away. 
Come in, sir ! 'Tis a full belly you'll have 
when you leaves the table, an' 'tis a warm 
bed you'll sleep in, this night." 

After family prayers, in which we, the 
strangers he had taken in, were commended 
to the care and mercy of God in such simple, 
feeling phrases as proved the fine quality of 
this man's hospitality and touched our hearts 
in their innermost parts, Elisha invited us to 
sit by the kitchen fire with him "for a 



112 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

spell." While the dogs snored in chorus 
with a young kid and a pig by the roaring 
stove, and the chickens rustled and clucked 
in their coop under the bare spruce sofa 
which Elisha had made, and the wind flung 
the rain against the window-panes, we three 
talked of weather and fish and toil and peril 
and death. It may be that a cruel coast 
and a sea quick to wrath engender a certain 
dread curiosity concerning the " taking off " 
in a man who fights day by day to survive 
the enmity of both. Elisha talked for a 
long time of death and heaven and hell. 
Then, solemnly, his voice fallen to a whisper, 
he told of his father, Skipper George, a man 
of weakling faith, who had been reduced to 
idiocy by wondering what came after death 
— by wondering, wondering, wondering, in 
sunlight and mist and night, off shore in the 
punt, labouring at the splitting-table, at work 
on the flake, everywhere, wondering all the 
time where souls took their flight. 

" 'Twere wonderin' whether hell do be 
underground or not," said Elisha, "that 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK 113 

turned un over at last. Sure, sir," with a 
sigh, " 'twere doubt, you sees. 'Tis faith us 
must have." 

Elisha stroked the nearest dog with a gen- 
tle hand — a mighty hand, toil-worn and mis- 
shapen, like the man himself. 

"Do your besettin' sin get the best o' 
you, sir ? " he said, looking up. It may be 
that he craved to hear a confession of fail- 
ure that he might afterwards sustain him- 
self with the thought that no man is invul- 
nerable. "Sure, we've all besettin' sins. 
When we do be snatched from the burnin' 
brands, b'y, a little spark burns on, an' on, 
an' on; an' he do be wonderful hard t' 
douse out. 'Tis like the eye us must pluck 
out by command o' the Lard. With some 
men 'tis a taste for baccy. With some 'tis 
a scarcity o' salt in the fish. With some 
'tis too much water in the lobster cans. 
With some 'tis a cravin' for sweetness. 
With me 'tis worse nor all. Sure, sir," he 
went on, " I've knowed some men so fond, 
so wonderful fond, o' baccy that um smoked 



114 DK. GKENFELL^S PARISH 

the shoes off their children's feet. 'Tis 
their besettin' sin, sir — 'tis their besettin' 
sin. But 'tis not baccy that worries me. 
The taste fell away when I were took from 
sin. 'Tis not that. 'Tis worse. Sure, with 
me, sir," he said, brushing his hand over 
his forehead in a weary, despairing way, 
"'tis laughin'. 'Tis the sin of jokin' that 
puts my soul in danger o' bein' hove over- 
board into the burnin' lake. I were a won- 
derful joker when I were a sinful man. 
'Twas all I lived for — not t' praise God an' 
prepare my soul for death. When I gets 
up in the marnin', now, sir, I feels like 
jokin' like what I used t' do, particular if it 
do be a fine day. Ah, sir," with a long 
sigh, " 'tis a great temptation, I tells you — 
'tis a wonderful temptation. But 'tis not 
set down in the Book that Jesus Christ 
smiled an' laughed, an' with the Lard's help 
I'll beat the devil yet. I'll beat un," he 
cried, as if inspired to some supreme strug- 
gle. " I'll beat un," he repeated, clinching 
his great hands. " I will ! " 



SOME OUTPOET FOLK 115 

Elisha bade us good-night with a solemn 
face. A little smile — a poor, frightened 
little smile of tender feeling for us — flick- 
ered in his eyes for the space of a breath. 
But he snuffed it out relentlessly, expressed 
his triumph with a flash of his eye, and 
went away to bed. In the morning, when 
the sun called us up, he had come back 
from the early morning's fishing, and was 
singing a most doleful hymn of death and 
judgment over the splitting-table in the 
stage. The sunlight was streaming into 
the room, and the motes were all dancing 
merrily in the beam. The breeze was rust- 
ling the leaves of a sickly bush under the 
window — coaxing them to hopeful whis- 
perings. I fancied that the sea was all blue 
and rippling, and that the birds were flitting 
through the sunlight, chirping their sym- 
pathy with the smiling day. But Elisha, 
his brave heart steeled against the whole 
earth's frivolous mood, continued heroically 
to pour forth his dismal song. 



116 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 

Twilight was filling the kitchen with 
strange shadows. We had disposed of 
Aunt Ruth's watered fish and soaked hard- 
bread with hunger for a relish. Uncle 
Simon's glance was mournfully intent upon 
the bare platter. 

"But," said Aunt Ruth, with obstinate 
emphasis, " I knows they be. 'Tis not what 
we hears we believe, sir. No, 'tis not what 
we hears. 'Tis what we sees. An' I've 
seed un." 

" 'Tis true, sir," said Uncle Simon, look- 
ing up. " They be nar a doubt about it." 

"But where," said I, "did she get her 
looking-glass ? " 

" They be many a trader wrecked on this 
coast, sir," said Uncle Simon. 

"'Twere not a mermaid I seed," said 
Aunt Ruth. " 'Twere a merm^^." 

"Sure," said Uncle Simon, mysteriously, 
"they do be in the sea the shape o' all 
that's on the land — shape for shape, sir. 
They be sea-horses an' sea-cows an' sea-dogs. 
"Why not the shape o' humans ? " 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK IIY 

" "Well," said Aunt Euth, " 'twas when I 
were a little maid. An' 'twas in a gale o' 
wind. I goes down t' Billy Cove t' watch 
me father bring the punt in, an' I couldn't 
see un anywhere. So I thought he were 
drownded. 'Twere handy t' dark when I 
seed the merman rise from the water. He 
were big an' black— so black as the stove. 
I could see the eyes of un so plain as I can 
see yours. He were not good lookin' — no, 
I'll say that much — he were not good 
lookin'. He waved his arms, an' beckoned 
an' beckoned an' beckoned. But, sure, sir, 
I wouldn't go, for I were feared. "Tis 
the soul o' me father,' thinks I. *Sure, 
the sea's cotched un.' So I runs home an' 
tells me mother; an' she says 'twere a 
merman. I hnows they be mermans an' 
mermaids, 'cause I'se seed un. 'Tis what 
we sees we believes." 

"'Tis said," said Uncle Simon, "that if 
you finds un on the rocks an' puts un in the 
water they gives you three wishes ; an' all 
you has t' do is wish, an' " 



118 DE. GEENFELL^S PARISH 

" 'Tis said," said Aunt Ruth, with a pro- 
digious frown across the table, "that the 
mermaids trick the fishermen t' the edge o' 
the sea an' steals un away. Uncle Simon 
Ride," she went on, severely, "if ever 
you " 

Uncle Simon looked sheepish. "Sure, 
woman," said he, the evidences of guilt 
plain on his face, " they be no danger t' me. 
'Twould take a clever mermaid t' " 

"Uncle Simon Ride," said Aunt Ruth, 
" nar another word. An' if you don't put 
my spinnin! wheel t' rights this night I'll 
give you your tea in a mug ^ t'-morrow — an' 
mind that, sir, mind that ! " 

After we had left the table Uncle Simon 
took me aside. "She do be a wonderful 
woman," said he, meaning Aunt Ruth. 
Then, earnestly, " She've no cause t' be jeal- 
ous o' the mermaids. No, sir — sure, no." 

It is difficult to convey an adequate con- 
ception of the barrenness of this coast. If 
^ A scolding. 



SOME OUTPOET FOLK 119 

you were to ask a fisherman of some remote 
outport what his flour was made of he would 
stare at you and be mute. " Wheat " would 
be a new, meaningless word to many a man 
of those places. It may be that the words 
of the Old Skipper of Black Harbour will 
help the reader to an understanding of the 
high value set upon the soil and all it pro- 
duces. 

" Come with me," said the Old Skipper, 
" an' I'll show you so fine a garden as ever 
you seed." 

The garden was on an island two miles 
off the mainland. Like many another patch 
of ground it had to be cultivated from a 
distant place. It was an acre, or there- 
abouts, which had been "won from the 
wilderness " by the labour of several gener- 
ations ; and it was owned by eleven fam- 
ilies. This was not a garden made by gath- 
ering soil and dumping it in a hollow, as 
most gardens are ; it was a real " meadow." 

"Look at them potatoes, sir," said the 
skipper. He radiated pride in the soil's 



120 DE. GEENFELUS PAEISH 

achievement as he waited for my outburst 
of congratulation. 

The potatoes, owing to painstaking fer- 
tilization with small fish, had attained ad- 
mirable size — in tops. But the hay ! 

" 'Tis fine grass," said the skipper. '" Fine 
as ever you seed ! " 

It was thin, and nearer gray than yellow ; 
and every stalk was weak in the knees. I 
do it more than justice when I write that it 
rose above my shoe tops. 

"'Tis sizable hay," said the skipper. 
"'Tis time I had uncut." 

On the way back the skipper caught sight 
of a skiff-load of hay, which old John Burns 
was sculling from Duck Island. He was 
careful to point it out as good evidence of 
the fertility of that part of the world. By 
and by we came to a whisp of hay which 
had fallen from the skiff. It was a mere 
handful floating on the quiet water. 

" The wastefulness of that dunderhead ! " 
exclaimed the skipper. 



SOME OUTPOET FOLK 121 

He took the boat towards the whisp of 
hay, puffing his wrath all the while. 

" Pass the gaff, b'y," he said. 

With the utmost care he hooked the whisp 
of hay — to the last straw — and drew it over 
the side. 

" 'Tis a sin," said he, " t' waste good hay 
like that." 

Broad fields, hay and wheat and corn, all 
yellow, waving to the breeze — the sun flood- 
ing all — were far, far beyond this man's im- 
agination. He did not know that in other 
lands the earth yields generously to the 
men who sow seed. How little did the 
harvest mean to him ! The world is a world 
of rock and sea — of sea and naked rock. 
Soil is gathered in buckets. Gardens are 
made by hand. The return is precious in 
the sight of men. 

Uncle Zeb Gale — Daddy Gale, who had 
long ago lost count of his grandchildren, 
they were so many — OP Zeb tottered up 



122 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

from the sea, gasping and coughing, but 
broadly smiling in the intervals. He had 
a great cod in one hand, and his old cloth 
cap was in the other. His head was bald, 
and his snowy beard covered his chest. 
Toil and the weight of years had bowed 
his back, spun a film over his eyes and 
cracked his voice. But neither toil nor 
age nor hunger nor cold had broken his 
cheery interest in all the things of life, 
or Zeb smiled in a sweetly winning way. 
He stopped to pass a word with the 
stranger, who was far away from home, 
and therefore, no doubt, needed a hearten- 
ing word or two. 

" Fine even, zur," said he. 

"'Tis that, Uncle Zeb. How have the 
fish been to-day ? " 

"Oh, they be a scattered fish off the 
Mull, zur. But 'tis only a scattered one. 
They don't run in, zur, like what they 
used to when I were young, sure." 

" How many years ago, sir ? " 

" 'Tis many year, zur," said Uncle Zeb, 



SOME OUTPOET FOLK 123 

smiling indulgence with my youth. " They 
was fish a-plenty when — when — when I 
were young. 'Tis not what it used t' be 
— no, no, zur ; not at all. Sure, zur, I been 
goin' t' the grounds off the Mull since I 
were seven years old. Since I were seven ! 
I be eighty-three now, zur. Seventy-six 
year, zur, I has fished out o' this here 
harbour." 

Uncle Zeb stopped to wheeze a bit. He 
was out of breath with this long speech. 
And when he had wheezed a bit, a spasm 
of hard coughing took him. He was on 
the verge of the last stage of consump- 
tion, was Uncle Zeb. 

" 'Tis a fine harbour t' fish from, zur," he 
gasped. "They be none better. Least- 
ways, so they tells me — them that's cruised 
about a deal. Sure, I've never seen another. 
'Tis t' Conch ^ I've wanted t' go since I were 
a young feller. I'll see un yet, zur — sure, 
an' I will." 

" You are eighty-three ? " said L 

^ Some miles distant. 



124: DR. GEENFELKS PARISH 

" I be the oldest man t' the harbour, zur 
I marries the maids an' the young fellers 
when they's no parson about." 

" You have fished out of this harbour for 
seventy-six years ? " said I, in vain trying to 
comprehend the deprivation and dull toil of 
that long life — trying to account for the 
childlike smile which had continued to the 
end of it. 

" Ay, zur," said Uncle Zeb. " But, sure, 
they be plenty o' time t' see Conch yet. Me 
father were ninety when he died. I be only 
eighty-three." 

Uncle Zeb tottered up the hill. Soon the 
dusk swallowed his old hulk. I never saw 
him again. 

We were seated on the Head, high above 
the sea, watching the fleet of punts come 
from the Mad Mull grounds and from the 
nets along shore, for it was evening. Jack 
had told me much of the lore of lobster- 
catching and squid-jigging. Of winds and 
tides and long breakers he had given me 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK 125 

solemn warnings — and especially of that 
little valley down which the gusts came, 
no man knew from where. He had im- 
parted certain secrets concerning the 
whereabouts of gulls' nests and juniper- 
berry patches, for I had won his con- 
fidence. I had been informed that Uncle 
Tom BulPs punt was in hourly danger of 
turning over because her spread of canvas 
was "scandalous" great, that Bill Blud- 
gell kept the "surliest dog t' the har- 
bour," that the "goaats was wonderful 
hard t' find" in the fog, that a brass 
bracelet would cure salt-water sores on 
the wrists, that — I cannot recall it all. 
He had "mocked" a goat, a squid, a 
lamb, old George Walker at prayer, and 
" Uncle " Ruth berating " Aunt " Simon for 
leaving the splitting-table unclean. 

Then he sang this song, in a thin, sweet 
treble, which was good to hear : 

" 'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island, 
"When daddy comes home from swilin',* 

* Sealing. 



126 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

(Maggoty fish hnng up in the air, 
Fried in maggoty butter) ! 
Cakes and tea for breakfast, 
Pork and dufi for dinner, 
Cakes and tea for supper, 
"When daddy comes home from swilin'." 

He asked me riddles, thence he passed to 
other questions, for he was a boy who won- 
dered, and wondered, what lay beyond those 
places which he could see from the highest 
hill. I described a street and a pavement, 
told him that the earth was round, defined 
a team of horses, corrected his impression 
that a church organ was played with the 
mouth, and denied the report that the flakes 
and stages of 'New York were the largest in 
the world. The boys of the outports do not 
play games — there is no time, and at any 
rate, the old "West Country games have not 
come down to this generation with the 
dialect, so I told him how to play tag, 
hide-and-go-seek and blind man's buff, and 
proved to him that they might be in- 
teresting, though I had to admit that 
they might not be profitable in certain cases. 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK 127 

" Some men," said I, at last, " have never 
seen the sea." 

He looked at me and laughed his unbelief. 
" Sure," said he, "not a hundred haven't ? " 

" Many more than that." 

" 'Tis hard t' believe, zur," he said. " Ter- 
rible hard." 

We were silent while he thought it over. 

" What's the last harbour in the world ? " 
he asked. 

I hesitated. 

" The very last, zur ! They do say 'tis St. 
Johns. But, sure, zur, they must be some- 
thing beyond. What do it be ? " After a 
silence, he continued, speaking wistfully, 
" What's the last harbour in all the whole 
world, zur ? Doesn't you know ? " 

It had been a raw day — gray and gusty, 
with the wind breaking over the island from 
a foggy sea : a sullen day. All day long 
there had been no rest from the deep harsh 
growl of the breakers. We were at tea in 
Aunt Amanda's cottage; the table was 



128 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

spread with, dried caplin, bread and butter, 
and tea, for Aunt Amanda, the Scotsman 
who was of the harbour, and me. The 
harbour water was fretting under the win- 
dows as the swift gusts whipped over it; 
and beyond the narrows, where the sea was 
tumbling, the dusk was closing over the 
frothy waves. Out there a punt was reel- 
ing in from the Mad Mull fishing grounds ; 
its brown sail was like a leaf driven by the 
wind. I saw the boat dart through the nar- 
rows to the sheltered water, and I sighed in 
sympathy with the man who was then furl- 
ing his wet and fluttering sail, for I, too, 
had experienced the relief of sweeping from 
that waste of grasping waves to the sanctu- 
ary of the harbour. 

" Do you think of the sea as a friend ? " 
I asked Aunt Amanda. 

She was a gray, stern woman, over whose 
face, however, a tender smile was used to 
flitting, the light lingered last in her faded 
eyes — the daughter, wife, and mother of 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK 129 

punt fishermen. So she had dealt hand to 
hand with the sea since that night, long 
ago, when, as a wee maid, she first could 
reach the splitting-table by standing on a 
bucket. As a child she had tripped up the 
path to Lookout Head, to watch her father 
beat in from the grounds ; as a maiden, she 
had courted when the moonlight was falling 
upon the ripples of Lower Harbour, and the 
punt was heaving to the spent swell of the 
open ; as a woman she had kept watch on 
the moods of the sea, which had possessed 
itself of her hours of toil and leisure. In 
the end — may the day be long in coming — 
she will be taken to the little graveyard 
under the Lookout in a skiff. E'ow, at my 
suggestion, she dropped her eyes to her 
apron, which she smoothed in an absent 
way. She seemed to search her life — all the 
terror, toil, and glory of it — for the answer. 
She was not of a kind to make light replies, 
and I knew that the word to come would be 
of vast significance. 



130 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

" It do seem to me," she said, turning her 
eyes to the darkening water, " that the say 
is hungry for the lives o' men." 

" Tut, woman ! " cried the old Scotsman, 
his eyes all a-sparkle. " 'Tis a libel on the 
sea. "Why wull ye speak such trash to a 
stranger ? Have ye never heard, sir, what 
the poet says ? " 

" Well," I began to stammer. 

"Aye, man," said he, "they all babble 
about it. But have ye never read, 

" * O, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried, 
And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide, 
The exnlting sense, the pulse's maddening play, 
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way ? '" 

"With that, the sentimental old fellow 
struck an attitude. His head was thrown 
back ; his eyes were flashing ; his arm was 
rigid, and pointing straight through the 
window to that patch of white, far off in 
the gathering dark, where the sea lay rag- 
ing. It ever took a poet to carry that old 
Scotsman off his feet — to sweep him to some 
high, cloudy place, where the things of life 



SOME OUTPORT FOLK 131 

rearranged and decked themselves out to 
please his fancy. I confess, too, that his 
enthusiasm rekindled, for a moment, my 
third-reader interest in " a wet sheet and a 
flowing sea" and "a wind that follows 
fast." We have all loved well the sea of 
our fancy. 

" Grand, woman ! " he exclaimed, turning 
to Aunt Amanda, and still a-tremble. 
"Splendid!" 

Aunt Amanda fixed him with her gray 
eye. "I don't know," she said, softly. 
" But I know that the say took me father 
from me when I was a wee maid." 

The Scotsman bent his head over his 
plate, lower and lower still. His fervour 
departed, and his face, when he looked up, 
was full of sympathy. Of a sudden my 
ears hearkened again to the growling break- 
ers, and to the wind, as it ran past, leaping 
from sea to wilderness ; and my spirit felt 
the coming of the dark. 



XI 

WINTER PRACTICE 

IT is, then, to the outporter, to the men 
of the fleet and to the Labrador live- 
yere that Doctor Grenfell devotes him- 
self. The hospital at Indian Harbour is the 
centre of the Labrador activity; the hos- 
pital at Sto Anthony is designed to care for 
the needs of the French shore folk ; the hos- 
pital at Battle Harbour — the first estab- 
lished, and, possibly, the best equipped of 
all — receives patients from all directions, but 
especially from the harbours of the Strait 
and the Gulf. In the little hospital-ship, 
Strathcona^ the doctor himself darts here and 
there and everywhere, all summer long, re- 
sponding to calls, searching out the sick, 
gathering patients for the various hospitals. 
She is known to every harbour of the coast ; 
and she is often overcrowded with sick bound 
to the hospitals for treatment or operation. 
132 



WINTER PEACTICE 133 

Often, indeed, in cases of emergency, opera- 
tions are performed aboard, while she tosses 
in the rough seas. She is never a moment 
idle while the waters are open. But in the 
fall, when navigation closes, she must go into 
winter quarters; and then the sick and 
starving are sought out by dog-team and 
komatik. There is no cessation of beneficent 
activity; there is merely a change in the 
manner of getting about. Summer journeys 
are hard enough, God knows ! But winter 
travel is a matter of much greater difficulty 
and hardship. Not that the difficulty and 
hardship seem ever to be perceived by the 
mission-doctor ; quite the contrary : there is 
if anything greater delight to be found in a 
wild, swift race over rotten or heaving ice, 
or in a night in the driving snow, than in run- 
ning the StratJiGona through a nor'east gale. 
The Indian Harbour hospital is closed in the 
fall ; so intense is the cold, so exposed the 
situation, so scarce the wood, so few the 
liveyeres, that it has been found unprofitable 
to keep it open. There is another way of 



134: DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

meeting the needs of the situation ; and that 
is by despatching the Battle Harbour doctor 
northward in midwinter. The folk know 
that he is bound towards them — ^know the 
points of call — can determine within a 
month the time of his arrival. So they 
bring the sick to these places — and patiently 
wait. This is a hard journey — made alone 
with the dogs. Many a night the doctor 
must get into his sleeping bag and make 
himself as comfortable as possible in the 
snow, snuggled close to his dogs, for the sake 
of the warmth of their bodies. Six hundred 
miles north in the dead of winter, six hun- 
dred miles back again ; it takes a man of 
unchangeable devotion to undertake it ! 

The Labrador dogs — pure and half-breed 
" huskies," with so much of the wolf yet in 
them that they never bark — are for the most 
part used by the doctor on his journeys. 
There would be no getting anywhere with- 
out them ; and it must be said that they are 
magnificent animals, capable of heroic 



WINTER PRACTICE 135 

deeds. Every prosperous householder has 
at least six or eight full-grown sled-dogs and 
more puppies than he can keep track of. In 
summer they lie everywhere under foot by 
day, and by night howl in a demoniacal 
fashion far and near ; but they fish for 
themselves in shallow water, and are fat, 
and may safely be stepped over. In winter 
they are lean, desperately hungry, savage, 
and treacherous — in particular, a menace to 
the lives of children, whom they have been 
known to devour. There was once a father, 
just returned from a day's hunt on the ice, 
who sent his son to fetch a seal from the 
waterside ; the man had forgotten for the 
moment that the dogs were roaming the 
night and very hungry — and so he lost both 
his seal and his son. The four-year-old son 
of the Hudson Bay Company's agent at 
Cartwright chanced last winter to fall down 
in the snow. He was at once set upon by 
the pack; and when he was rescued (his 
mother told me the story) he had forty-two 
ugly wounds on his little body. For many 



136 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

nights afterwards the dogs howled under the 
window where he lay moaning. Eventually 
those concerned in the attack were hanged 
by the neck, which is the custom in such 
cases. 

Once, when Dr. Grenfell was wintering 
at St. Anthony, on the French shore, there 
came in great haste from Conch, a point 
sixty miles distant, a komatik with an 
urgent summons to the bedside of a man 
who lay dying of hemorrhage. And while 
the doctor was preparing for this journey, 
a second komatik, despatched from another 
place, arrived with a similar message. 

" Come at once," it was. " My little boy 
has broken his thigh." 

The doctor chose first to visit the lad. 
At ten o'clock that night he was at the bed- 
side. It had been a dark night — black dark : 
with the road precipitous, the dogs uncon- 
trollable, the physician in great haste. The 
doctor thought, many a time, that there 
would be " more than one broken limb " by 



WINTER PRACTICE 137 

the time of his arrival. But there was no 
misadventure; and he found the lad lying 
on a settle, in great pain, wondering why- 
he must suffer so. 

" Every minute or two, " says the doctor, 
" there would be a jerk, a flash of pain, and 
a cry to his father, who was holding him all 
the time." 

The doctor was glad " to get the chloro- 
form mask over the boy's face " — he is a 
sympathetic man, the doctor ; glad, always, 
to ease pain. And at one o'clock in the 
morning the broken bone was set and the 
doctor had had a cup of tea ; whereupon, he 
retired to a bed on the floor and a few 
hours' " watch below." At daylight, when 
he was up and about to depart, the little 
patient had awakened and was merrily call- 
ing to the doctor's little retriever. 

" He was as merry as a cricket," says the 
doctor, " when I bade him good-bye." 

About twelve hours on the way to Conch, 
where the man lay dying of hemorrhage 



138 DK. GEENFELL^S PARISH 

— a two days' journey — the doctor fell in 
with a dog-train bearing the mail. And 
the mail-man had a letter — a hasty sum- 
mons to a man in great pain some sixty 
miles in another direction. It was impossi- 
ble to respond. " That call," says the doctor, 
sadly, " owing to sheer impossibility, was not 
answered." It was haste away to Conch, 
over the ice and snow — for the most of 
the time on the ice of the sea — in order that 
the man who lay dying there might be suc- 
coured. But there was another interruption. 
When the dog-train reached the coast, there 
was a man waiting to intercept it : the news 
of the doctor's probable coming had spread. 

" I've a fresh team o' dogs," sir, said he, 
" t' take you t' the island. There's a man 
there, an' he's wonderful sick." 

Would the doctor go? Yes— he would 
go ! But he had no sooner reached that 
point of the mainland whence he was bound 
across a fine stretch of ice to the island 
than he was again intercepted. It was a 
young man, this time, whose mother lay 



WINTER PRACTICE 139 

ill, with no other Protestant family living 
within fifty miles. Would the doctor help 
her ? Yes — the doctor would ; and did. 
And when he was about to be on his way 
again 

" Could you bear word," said the woman, 
"f Mister Elliot t' come bury my boy? 
He said he'd come, sir ; but now my little 
lad has been lying dead, here, since Janu- 
ary." 

It was then early in March. Mr. Elliot 
was a Protestant fisherman who was accus- 
tomed to bury the Protestant dead of that 
district. Yes — the doctor would bear word 
to him. Having promised this, he set out 
to visit the sick man on the island; for 
whom, also, he did what he could. 

Oif again towards Conch — now with 
fresh teams, which had been provided by 
the friends of the man who lay there dying. 
And by the way a man brought his little 
son for examination and treatment — " a lad 
of three years," says the doctor ; " a bright. 



140 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 

healthy, embryo fisherman, light-haired and 
blue-eyed, a veritable celt." 

"And what's the matter with him?" 
was the physician's question. 

" HeVe a club foot, sir," was the answer. 

And so it turned out : the lad had a club 
foot. He was fond of telling his mother 
that he had a right foot and a wrong one. 
"The wrong one, mama," said he, "is no 
good," He was to be a cripple for life — 
utterly incapacitated: the fishing does not 
admit of club feet. But the doctor made 
arrangements for the child's transportation 
to the St. Anthony hospital, where he could, 
without doubt be cured ; and then hurried 
on. 

The way now led through a district des- 
perately impoverished — as much by igno- 
rance and indolence as by anything else. 
At one settlement of tilts there were forty 
souls, " without a scrap of food or money," 
who depended upon their neighbours — and 
the opening of navigation was still three 



WINTER PEACTICE 141 

months distant ! In one tilt there lay what 
seemed to be a bundle of rags. 

" And who is this ? " the doctor asked. 

It was a child. " The fair hair of a blue- 
eyed boy of about ten years disclosed 
itself," says the doctor. "Stooping over 
him I attempted to turn his face towards 
me. It was drawn with pain, and a moan 
escaped the poor little fellow's lips. He 
had disease of the spine, with open sores in 
three places. He was stark naked, and he 
was starved to a skeleton. He gave me a 
bright smile before I left, but I confess to a 
shudder of horror at the thought that his 
lot might have been mine. Of course the 
' fear of pauperizing ' had to disappear be- 
fore the claims of humanity. Yet, there, in 
the depth of winter," the doctor asks, with 
infinite compassion, " would not a lethal 
draught be the kindest friend of that little 
one of Him that loved the children ? " 

For five days the doctor laboured in 
Conch, healing many of the folk, helping 



142 BE. GRENFELL^S PARISH 

more; and at the end of that period the 
man who has suffered the hemorrhage was 
so far restored that with new dogs the 
doctor set out for Canada Bay, still travel- 
ling southward. Ther^, as he says, "we 
had many interesting cases." One of these 
involved an operation : that of " opening a 
knee-joint and removing a loose body," with 
the result that a fisherman who had long 
been crippled was made quite well again. 
Then there came a second call from Conch. 
Seventeen men had come for the physician, 
willing to haul the komatik themselves, if 
no dogs were to be had. To this call the 
doctor immediately responded ; and having 
treated patients at Conch and by the way, 
he set out upon the return journey to St. 
Anthony, fearing that his absence had al- 
ready been unduly prolonged. And he had 
not gone far on the way before he fell in 
with another komatik, provided with a box, 
in which lay an old woman bound to St. 
Anthony hospital, in the care of her sons, 
to have her foot amputated. 



WINTER PRACTICE 143 

Crossing Hare Bay, the doctor had a 
slight mishap — rather amusing, too, he 
thinks. 

" One of my dogs fell through the ice," 
says he. " There was a biting nor' west 
■wind blowing, and the temperature was 
ten degrees below zero. When we were 
one mile from the land, I got off to run 
and try the ice. It suddenly gave way, 
and in I fell. It did not take me long to 
get out, for I have had some little ex- 
perience, and the best advice sounds odd: 
it is *keep cool.' But the nearest house 
being at least ten miles, it meant, then, 
almost one's life to have no dry clothing. 
Fortunately, I had. The driver at once 
galloped the dogs back to the woods we 
had left, and I had as hard a mile's run- 
ning as ever I had ; for my clothing was 
growing to resemble the armour of an an- 
cient knight more and more, every j^ard, 
and though in my youth I was accustomed 
to break the ice to bathe if necessary, I 
never tried running a race in a coat of 



144 DE. GREKFELL^S PARISH 

mail. By the time I arrived at the trees 
and got out of the wind, my driver had a 
rubber poncho spread on the snow under 
a snug spruce thicket ; and I was soon as 
dry and a great deal warmer than before." 
At St. Anthony, the woman's foot was 
amputated; and in two days the patient 
was talking of " getting up." Meantime, a 
komatik had arrived in haste from a point 
on the northwest coast — a settlement one 
hundred and twenty miles distant. The 
doctor was needed there — and the doctor 
went ! 

This brief and inadequate description of 
a winter's journey may not serve to indicate 
the hardship of the life the doctor leads : he 
has small regard for that ; but it may faintly 
apprise the reader of the character of the 
work done, and of the will with which the 
doctor does it. One brief journey ! The 
visitation of but sixty miles of coast ! Add 
to this the numerous journeys of that winter, 
the various summer voyages of the Strath- 




THE DOCTOR ON A WINTER'S JOURNEY" 



WINTER PRACTICE 145 

cona ; conceive that the folk of two thou- 
sand miles are visited every year, often 
twice a year: then multiply by ten — for 
the mission has been in efficient existence 
for ten years — and the reader may reach 
some faint conception of the sum of good 
wrought by this man. But without know- 
ing the desolate land — without observing 
the emaciated bodies of the children — 
without hearing the cries of distress — it is 
impossible adequately to realize the bless- 
ing his devotion has brought to the coast. 



XII 

THE CHAMPION 

THE Deep-sea Mission is not con- 
cerned chiefly with the souls of the 
folk, nor yet exclusively with their 
bodies : it endeavours to provide them with 
religious instruction, to heal their ailments ; 
but it is quite as much interested, appar- 
ently, in improving their material condition. 
To the starving it gives food, to the naked 
clothing ; but it must not be supposed that 
charity is indiscriminately distributed. 
That is not the case. Far from it. When 
a man can cut wood for the steamer or hos- 
pitals in return for the food he is given, for 
example, he is required to do so ; but the 
unhappy truth is that a man can cut very 
little wood " on a winter's diet " exclusively 
of flour. " You gets weak all of a suddent, 
zur," one expressed it to me. In his effort 

to "help the people help themselves" the 
146 



THE CHAMPION 147 

doctor has established cooperative stores 
and various small industries. The result 
has been twofold : the regeneration of sev- 
eral communities, and an outbreak of hatred 
and dishonest abuse on the part of the trad- 
ers, who have too long fattened on the iso- 
lation and miseries of the people. The co- 
operative stores, I believe, are thriving, and 
the small industries promise well. Thus the 
mission is at once the hope and comfort of 
the coast. The man on the Strathcona is 
the only man, in all the long history of that 
wretched land, to offer a helping hand to 
the whole people from year to year without 
ill temper and without hope of gain. 

*' But I can't do everything," says he. 

And that is true. There is much that the 
mission-doctor cannot do — delicate opera- 
tions, for which the more skilled hand of a 
specialist is needed. For a time, one season, 
an eminent surgeon, of Boston, the first of 
many, it is hoped, cruised on the Strathcona 
and most generously operated at Battle 
Harbour. The mission gathered the pa- 



148 DE. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 

tients to the hospital from far and near be- 
fore the surgeon arrived. Folk who had 
looked forward in dread to a painful death, 
fast approaching, were of a sudden promised 
life. There was a man coming, they were 
told, above the skill of the mission surgeons, 
who could surely cure them. The deed was 
as good as the promise : many operations 
were performed ; all the sick who came for 
healing were healed ; the hope of not one 
was disappointed. Folk who had suffered 
years of pain were restored. ]^ever had 
such a thing been known on the Labrador. 
Men marvelled. The surgeon was like a 
man raising the dead. But there was a 
woman who is now, perhaps, dead ; she 
lacked the courage. Day after day for two 
weeks she waited for the Boston surgeon ; 
but when he came she fled in terror of the 
knife. Her ailment was mortal in that 
land ; but she might easily have been cured ; 
and she fled home when she knew that the 
healer had come. 'No doubt her children 
now know what it is to want a mother. 



THE CHAMPION 149 

Dr. Grenfell will let no man oppress his 
people when his arm is strong enough to 
champion them. There was once a rich man 
(so I was told before I met the doctor) — a 
man of influence and wide acquaintance — 
Avhose business was in a remote harbour of 
Newfoundland. He did a great wrong; 
and when the news of it came to the ears of 
the mission-doctor, the anchor of the Strath- 
cona came up in a hurry, and off she steamed 
to that place. 

" Now," said the doctor to this man, " you 
must make what amends you can, and you 
must confess your sin." 

The man laughed aloud. It seemed to 
him, no doubt, a joke that the mission-doc- 
tor should interfere in the affairs of one so 
rich who knew the politicians at St. Johns. 
But the mission-doctor was also a magis- 
trate. 

" I say," said he, deliberately, " that you 
must pay one thousand dollars and confess 
your sin." 

The man cursed the doctor with great 



160 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 

laughter, and dared him to do his worst. 
The joke still had point. 

"I warn you," said the doctor, "that I 
will arrest you if you do not do precisely as 
I say." 

The man pointed out to the doctor that 
his magisterial district lay elsewhere, and 
again defied him. 

"Very true," said the doctor; "but I 
warn you that I have a crew quite capable 
of taking you into it." 

The joke was losing its point. But the 
man blustered that he, too, had a crew. 

" You must make sure," said the doctor, 
" that they love you well enough to fight 
for you. On Sunday evening," he contin- 
ued, " you will appear at the church at seven 
o'clock and confess your sin before the con- 
gregation ; and next week you will pay the 
money as I have said." 

" I'll see you in h — 11 first ! " replied the 
man, defiantly. 

At the morning service the doctor an- 



THE CHAMPION 151 

nounced that a sinful man would confess his 
sin before them all that night. There was 
great excitement. Other men might be pre- 
vailed upon to make so humiliating a con- 
fession, the folk said, but not this one — not 
this rich man, whom they hated and feared, 
because he had so long pitilessly oppressed 
them. So they were not surprised when at 
the evening service the sinful man did not 
show his face. 

" Will you please to keep your seats," said 
the doctor, " while I go fetch that man." 

He found the man in a neighbour's house, 
on his knees in prayer, with his friends. 
They were praying fervently, it is said ; but 
whether or not that the heart of the doctor 
might be softened I do not know. 

"Prayer," said the doctor, "is a good 
thing in its place, but it doesn't * go ' here. 
Come with me." 

The man meekly went with the doctor ; 
he was led up the aisle of the church, was 
placed where all the people could see him ; 



152 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 

and then he was asked many questions, after 
the doctor had described the great sin of 
which he was guilty. 

" Did you do this thing ? " 

"I did." 

" You are an evil man, of whom the peo- 
ple should beware ? " 

" I am." 

" You deserve the punishment of man and 
God?" 

"I do." 

There was much more, and at the end of 
it all the doctor told the man that the good 
God would forgive him if he should ask in 
true faith and repentance, but that the peo- 
ple, being human, could not. For a whole 
year, he charged the people, they must not 
speak to that man ; but if at the end of that 
time he had shown an honest disposition to 
mend his ways, they might take him to 
their hearts. 

The end of the story is that the man paid 
the money and left the place. 



THE CHAMPION 153 

This relentless judge, on a stormy day of 
last July, carried many bundles ashore at 
Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the Labra- 
dor. The wife of the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany's agent exclaimed with delight when 
she opened them. They were Christmas 
gifts from the children of the " States " to 
the lads and little maids of that coast. With 
almost all there came a little letter addressed 
to the unknown child who was to receive 
the toy ; they were filled with loving words 
— with good wishes, coming in childish sin- 
cerity from the warm little hearts. The 
doctor never forgets the Christmas gifts. 
He is the St. Nicholas of that coast. If he 
ever weeps at all, I should think it would be 
when he hears that despite his care some 
child has been neglected. The wife of the 
agent stowed away the gifts against the 
time to come. 

"It makes them very happy," said the 
agent's wife. 

" Not long ago," I chanced to say, " I saw 
a little girl with a stick of wood for a dolly. 



154 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 

Are they not afraid to play with these pretty 
things ? " 

"They are^'* she laughed. "They use 
them for ornaments. But that doesn't mat- 
ter. It makes them happy just to look at 
them." 

We all laughed. 

" And yet," she continued, " they do play 
with them, sometimes, after all. There is a 
little girl up the bay who has hissed the 
paint off her dolly ! " 

Thus and all the time, in storm and sun- 
shine, summer and winter weather, Grenfell 
of the Deep-sea Mission goes about doing 
good ; if it's not in a boat, it's in a dog-sled. 
He is what he likes to call "a Christian 
man." But he is also a hero — at once the 
bravest and the most beneficently useful 
man I know. If he regrets his isolation, if 
the hardship of the life sometimes oppresses 
him, no man knows it. He does much, but 
there is much more to do. If the good peo- 
ple of the world would but give a little more 



THE CHAMPION 155 

of what they have so abundantly — and if 
they could but know the need, they would 
surely do that — ^joy might be multiplied on 
that coast ; nor would any man be wronged 
by misguided charity. 

" What a man does for the love of God," 
the doctor once said, " he does differently." 



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